
Class . 
Book. 



HNG4 



Copyright N?_ 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



The Social Problem Solved, without Either 
Socialism or Capitalism 

THE 

COMING GOLDEN AGE 

AN OUTGROWTH OF REMEDYING 
RATHER THAN ABANDONING 
OUR INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM 



BY 

FRANK ROSEWATER 



PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHOR 

250 East 51st Street 
NEW YORK CITY 






Copyright, 1917 
By FRANK ROSEWATER 



DEC 25 1317 



POINTED BY BEATJNWOBTH & CO., BROOKLYN, N. Y. 



©CIA479698 



DEDICATED 

TO THE 

Harmonious Alignment of Man with Man, 

and Nation with Nation, in all 

the Affairs of Life. 

So that the Honorable Ambitions of every Nation 
and of every Individual may be Fulfilled; and that those 
that are Dishonorable may be held in check. 

So that the reign of Economic, as well as of Physical 
Might, may become a thing of the Past, along with the 
Rule of Privileged Classes. 

So that the Pride of the World may be as much in 
Moral as in Material Progress; and that Greater Justice 
Lead its Flags and Less Bloodshed Follow them. 



PREFACE 



The Coming Golden Age presents no arbi- 
trary or Socialist Utopia; nor is the title it 
bears a mere phrase to gild a milk-and-water 
gospel of goody goody ness. It purports to be 
literally just what its title implies. 

Monetarism, our present industrial system, 
is an automatic exchange process, whose use of 
money unites into co-operation all the labor 
of the civlized world, whether applied indi- 
vidually or in co-ordinated groups working in 
shops, factories or other industrial enterprises. 

Wonderful and prodigious as are the achieve- 
ments of this exchange process, it is nevertheless 
exposed to one grave defect, which is herein 
clearly pointed out, and to which are traceable 
nearly all the industrial ills and disturbances 
by which the world from the earliest days 
has been afflicted — disturbances from industrial 
crises to riots, revolutions and murderous wars; 
from chronic mistrust and abnormal antagonism 
to corruption and depravity in a thousand forms. 

The defect in question — a shamefully negli- 



6 PREFACE 

gent regulation of the monetary circulation — 
needs but correction, quickly to remove all 
these symptoms of fundamental abnormalism. 
The correction of this defect would establish 
harmonious relations both between man and 
man and between nation and nation, supply- 
ing the foundation for an enduring and honorable 
peace between the nations, resting on a mini- 
mum use of force. 

The State would merely institute those 
changes needed to enforce a normal circula- 
tion of money and a normal use of wealth; 
and the people would do the rest, in the ordi- 
nary way of evolution. In every vocation, 
great changes would be made by its own mem- 
bers, readjusting their affairs to suit the trend 
to normal conditions that would follow. It 
would incur no hardship, being like a removal 
from cramped to commodious quarters. 

In the new philosophy of economics evolved, 
discussion of matters of mere academic im- 
portance has been avoided, as also digressions 
not pertinent to the main issue — thereby bring- 
ing into closer connection the interrelated 
questions at issue, and making the whole more 
easily understood. 

The Author. 



CONTENTS 



PART ONE 
IRRECIPROCAL MONETARISM 

OUR PRESENT INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. The Mightiest of Revolutions. . 11 

II. Money Monopoly 26 

III. Land Monopoly 32 

IV. Mercantile Monopoly 38 

V. The Toll of Capitalism 45 

VI. The Philosophy of Value 49 

VII. Irreciprocal Foreign Trade 57 

VIII. The Medium of Exchange 67 

IX. Past Industrial Systems 76 

X. Socialism and Other Projects ... 82 

PART TWO 
PROPRIETARISM 

OR 

MONETARISM MADE RECIPROCAL 

the industrial system of the future 

I. Constructive Proprietarism 97 

II. Transitional Proprietarism 110 

Conclusion 124 

7 



PART ONE 



UNRECIPROCAL MONETARISM 

OUR PRESENT INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM 



CHAPTER I 

The Mightiest of Revolutions 

Romance contains no stranger or more start- 
ling tale than that revealing the manner in 
which capital originated and acquired its power 
to command interest. 

The story of Capitalism begins in the re- 
mote era wiien money first came into use as 
an intermediary of exchange, completely revo- 
lutionizing the industrial system of those days. 
It introduced new features of the most shocking 
and terrible character, as well as a marvelous 
enhancement of man's material welfare. 

Prior to this period, men had traded pro- 
ductions with each other without the intervene 
tion of money. A wolf pelt would be given 
for a clay pot; a sheep for a piece of cloth; 
a mess of fish for a measure of olives; and so 
on — each such deal forming a completed ex- 
change. This mode of dealing was known as 
barter; and the system will hereafter be alluded 
to as Barterism. 

11 



12 THE COMING GOLDEN AGE 

Barterism was a one-step exchange; while 
Monetarism, which superseded it, was a two- 
step process, exposed to great abuse. 

What the abuse was, I will proceed to ex- 
plain. Under Monetarism, a man was pre- 
sumed to sell his own productions for money, 
and to use the money in buying the productions 
of his fellow toilers — a variety of commodities 
comprising his subsistence. Unfortunately, men 
would not always buy the productions of their 
fellow men, after having sold their own. Quite 
a number preferred to hoard the bulk of the 
money they acquired, making the acquisition 
of money hoards the main object and goal of their 
efforts. 

The hoarders literally refused to take the 
second step in the exchange process, therein to 
a large extent repudiating the reciprocal pur- 
chase of other people's productions, after others 
had bought their productions. 

In their great zeal to amass money hoards, 
the practice appeared to them perfectly harm- 
less; though, as we shall soon see, it became 
a terrible scourge to mankind. 



THE MIGHTIEST OF REVOLUTIONS 13 
THE CORNER ON MONEY 

In their mania to amass money hoards, so 
many persons engaged in the practice, and so 
persistently and on so large a scale did they 
operate, that — without any collusion, or any 
evil intent — merely impelled by common cu- 
pidity — they had evolved a Gigantic Corner 
on Money, accompanied with a proportionally 
extensive Money Famine among the remain- 
ing people. This remarkable corner on money, 
together with its inseparable accompaniment 
of money famine, have ever since been the 
chronic state of industry. 

To persons unskilled in the wiles and arts 
of salesmanship, or who labored under any 
other disadvantage in the disposal of their 
productions, it became almost impossible to 
realize on them, owing to the extent to which 
hoarders were repudiating the reciprocal pur- 
chase of other people's productions — in effect 
constituting a great non-collusive boycott im- 
posed on them. 

It was a non-collusive boycott, creating a non- 
collusive monopoly of money, on one side; 
and a moneyless body of people on the other, 
who were left in great distress. 



14 THE COMING GOLDEN AGE 

While in this extraordinary plight, the boy- 
cotted and moneyless masses had recourse to 
what was then a new expedient. They spied 
out every man in possession of a loanable sur- 
plusage of money and went on their knees to 
him, praying for loans of money. In order 
to assure the return of the money, they pledged 
their belongings, each according to what he 
had; and driven by competition, they went 
further in pledging the payment of an additional 
sum } or bonus, gauged according to the amount 
of the loans and the time for which they were 
allowed. 

These bonuses afterwards became known as 
Interest, while the loanable surplus money of 
the hoarders became known as Capital. 

Such was the first stage of Capitalism, or 
non-collusive monopoly. 

As a later development, thousands who had 
pledged their belongings, and even their homes, 
as security for the return of borrowed money, 
and who, through the fickleness of the new 
exchange process, had been unable to repay 
them, forfeited their possessions and became 
industrial outcasts: tenants, hirelings, bonds- 
men, vagabonds, and also criminals and de- 



THE MIGHTIEST OF REVOLUTIONS 15 

praved wretches dispossessed of every human 
attribute. 

With the masses fairly dispossessed, the effect 
of continued hoarding and enlarging of hoards 
by the capitalist class was to keep capitalists, 
as a body, permanently entrenched as a possess- 
ing class; and the masses, as a body, per- 
manently dispossessed. 

Capitalists would not consume their prin- 
cipal — rather constantly adding to it, by evading 
consumption of more than a mere fraction of 
the income it yielded. 

Whether stationary or circulating, passive 
or active, capital was always an economic hoard, 
withheld from normal use, and impeding the 
movements of industry, until brought into action 
by concession of its invariable demand for 
interest profits, which is the portion of com- 
mercial profits representing interest on capital. 
Constantly vacillating between its passive part 
in impeding the movements of industry and its 
active part in serving for the toll of interest 
profits, there was always in force a partial 
boycott of industry, as a result of which it 
was enabled to enforce its unjust exactions. 

The entire body of capital represents an 



16 THE COMING GOLDEN AGE 

unpaid debt of reciprocal buying still due the 
masses, and one that honor must recognize 
and repay. Its vast non-collusive boycott and 
monopoly cannot forever remain licensed under 
a law that makes of collusive boycott and of 
collusive monopoly a penal offense. 

Failing to enforce reciprocal buying, our 
crude Monetarism turned society into a divided 
house, full of antagonism and strife, of deceit 
and violence, with one body of men preying 
upon the other — a madhouse full of delusion 
and monstrosity. 

The revolution it wrought was more momen- 
tous and terrible than any event in the annals 
of history. 

Under Barterism, each householder was owner 
of his own life equipment — the family home, 
the work outfit of his particular vocation, and 
all the materials and supplies accompanying 
them. He was his own master — neither tenant, 
hireling nor outcast. 

It was manifestly due to the fickleness of 
unbridled Monetarism that the masses were 
everywhere tricked out of their possessions 
and left an outcast body, by whom the mere 



THE MIGHTIEST OF REVOLUTIONS 17 

chance to work as wage slaves, for a trivial 
fraction of the fruit of their toil, was regarded 
as a boon. <If not reduced to chattel slavery, 
their liberty was at best a beggar's freedom. 

In the desperate straits of their position 
under Monetarism, large numbers of toilers, 
like drowning men grasping at straws, volun- 
tarily entered into bondage as serfs and slaves, 
preferring the security of its shackles to the 
gnawing worries of uncertainty. The repudia- 
tion of reciprocal buying probably drove more 
toilers into bondage than were ever enslaved 
through the brutal conquests of war. 

But that the Roman Empire supplied her 
outcast "freemen" with gratuitous corn, few 
of them would long have retained the ruinous 
liberty they enjoyed — supported in idleness; 
nor but that the Empire was surfeited with 
slaves, brought in from all sides as the prey 
of her conquests, or purchased with the money 
paid her in tributes, would the supply of gra- 
tuitous corn have long continued. 

Capitalism draws no line between man and 
beast. It makes income-yielding property of 
both; and where it allows men freedom, it is 
only because slave labor is less profitable. If 
the free toiler fares better than the slave, 



18 THE COMING GOLDEN AGE 

it is only because, faring better, he produces 
more and yields a larger revenue. In no form 
of bondage, whether in wage slavery, bound 
class to class, or in either serfdom or chattel 
slavery, does the toiler evade the scourge of 
the master's domination and his predatory grip. 

The acquisition of more lands, slaves, and 
other sources of parasitic income was the lead- 
ing motive of ancient wars, however veiled be- 
hind political and religious pretexts. It was 
to increase the volume of their income-yielding 
properties; and though practiced in subtler 
form, and veiled under other pretexts, the same 
dominating motive underlies modern wars. 

Even the acquisition of wives under Moham- 
edan polygamy, and the social evil under Chris- 
tian monogamy, are distinct symptoms or mani- 
festations of Capitalism; as are most of the 
corruption and depravity characterizing our 
abnormal state of society. 

It is true that its cumbrous and costly direct 
exchanges seriously impaired the efficiency of 
Barterism; but not the integrity of its align- 
ment of man to man. It was an honest system, 
trading product for product. It lured no man 
into a trade of properties for other men's prod- 



THE MIGHTIEST OF REVOLUTIONS 19 

ucts, leaving him destitute, as in his savage 
state. Its moral standard was not abomin- 
able, even if its material standard was deficient. 
It did not strip the multitudes and leave them 
on the level of the ox and the ass. The free- 
dom of their industrial status was left undis- 
turbed and un violated. The charm of the 
Golden Age in which they dwelt was an Eden 
undefiled. 

To have been reciprocal, Monetarism would 
not have required that each man buy of his 
neighbor as much as his neighbor buys of 
him, as under Barterism; but that each buys 
of all others, collectively, as much as all others, 
collectively, buy of him. 

In the process of industrial co-operation 
through which men aim to acquire their sub- 
sistence, there is developed no normal call 
for either labor or products of labor, save in 
proportion to the demand there is for subsistence. 
It is only as one buying the varied products 
of other men, that comprise his subsistence, 
and in proportion as he buys these products, 
that a man justifies his participation in the 
co-operation of industry — the sale of his labor 



20 THE COMING GOLDEN AGE 

or productions. If he sell in excess of his de- 
mand for subsistence products, he is displacing 
others, and thereby causing their impoverish- 
ment, their dispossession and their industrial 
subjugation. He is manifestly an intruder in 
the realm of industry — an invading conqueror. 

Dazzled by the rapid accumulation of wealth 
under the superior productive efficiency of 
Monetarism, the insidious substitution of in- 
dustrial bondage, as Monetarism advanced, went 
unobserved. It was with golden shears that 
the Delilah of Monetarism clipped the locks of 
the toiling Samsom and deprived this giant of 
his liberty and his strength. 

From the ordinary, commercial viewpoint, 
capital seems to render a valuable service, the 
price of which is interest; but seen in its true 
light, from the economic viewpoint, connected 
with the hoarding in which its power originates, 
it is impossible to resist the conviction that the 
charge of interest is an extortion and an in- 
tolerable abuse, crying for remedy. 

Of what good is the larger bread loaf of 
Monetarism, if bitter with the poison of a 



THE MIGHTIEST OF REVOLUTIONS 21 

detestable and degrading bondage? Is its su- 
perior productive efficiency a fair offset to the 
moral degeneracy witnessed in the mad van- 
ities and luxurious idleness of the rich, and 
the vices into which the despairing and abused 
multitudes are steeped? Is there in its ab- 
normal and antagonistic array of man against 
man and nation against nation, a token voicing 
in it more of civilization than of barbarism, or 
more of humanity than of savagery? 

Of what good are the palaces of the Morgans 
and the Rockefellers, while the toiling millions 
are ground in the dust, despoiled, and living 
from hand to mouth, on the verge of starva- 
tion? Of what good is all this smiling glitter, 
while our masses are doomed, as outcasts, to 
choose between winning their bread through 
chicanery and crime or the dire alternative of 
bowing under the yoke of tributary dominion? 
Of what good is 

This grandeur from the lust of gain, 
That leaves its countless victims slain 
In dingy garrets, grim and bare, 
In battle's furious flame and flare, 
In every age, on every side, 
In all dominions, far and wide? 



22 THE COMING GOLDEN AGE 



THE FUNDAMENTAL BLUNDER 

It seems strange that Monetarism, as our 
industrial system, should never have received 
distinct recognition; nor Capitalism, as a sep- 
arate system parasitically attached to it. 

Economists, including Karl Marx, the great 
opponent of Capitalism, seem uniformly to have 
regarded Capitalism and our industrial sys- 
tem as one and the same. 

This may probably be attributed to the 
fact that they had accepted as an exchange 
system a mere mass of indiscriminate buying 
and selling, without questioning the character 
of the resulting exchanges. 

In a similarly negligent manner, did they 
accept as a standard of possessions for civilized 
man, the nakedness of savage squalor. Nor 
did they recognize man's normal right to 
freely participate in the co-operation of in- 
dustry. Stripped of his possessions, a man might 
be excluded from participation in industry till 
he perished with starvation, with no pros- 
pect of relief aside from what charity or chance 
might offer. 

Nothing could be more fatuous than the 



THE MIGHTIEST OF REVOLUTIONS 23 

attitude of economists to the exchange process, 
which they accept as self-reciprocal. Because 
of the fact that what one person buys another 
sells, they hastily assume that all trade must 
be self-reciprocal, or perfectly balanced. That 
buyer and seller were two different persons, 
and that one might be led to buying till he had 
exhausted all his resources, while another sold 
till he had accumulated a proportional excess, 
seems never to have occurred to them; or that 
one might have been selling his services or 
the product of his services, while the other was 
compelled to sell his life equipment, which 
should have been an inalienable possession, and 
the lack of which made him a tributary dependent. 

An important sophistry supporting their de- 
lusion that trade is self-reciprocal is the belief 
common among them that money is a commodity. 

Money being the intermediary of exchanges, 
and commodities being the objects to be ex- 
changed, will any political economist please 
explain how money can simultaneously serve in 
both of these contrary positions? Yet, if it 
cannot perform this impossible task, how can 
money ever be a commodity? As well claim 
that the middle of a line is at its opposite ends, 



24 THE COMING GOLDEN AGE 

or that the center of a circle is on its circum- 
ference. To be given the form of a commodity 
does not impart to money the function of one. 

As an illustration of the hold these sophis- 
tries have had on economists, no less an author- 
ity than John Stuart Mill declares that " There 
can never, it is said, be a want of buyers for 
all commodities; because whoever offers com- 
modities for sale desires to obtain a com- 
modity in exchange for it, and is therefore 
a buyer by the mere fact of being a seller. 
The sellers and the buyers, for all commodities 
taken together, must, of metaphysical neces- 
sity of the case, be an exact equipoise to each 
other." In a like spirit, he says, "All trade 
is really barter, money being merely an instru- 
ment for exchanging things against one an- 
other." Of foreign trade he assures us it is 
"an actual trucking of one commodity against 
another." 

So thoroughly dominated by this fallacious 
dogma was Karl Marx as to remark that "In 
the last decade of the seventeenth century it 
had already been shown that money is a com- 
modity." 

Another prominent economist, J. E. Cairnes, 



THE MIGHTIEST OF REVOLUTIONS 23 

deliberately affirms that ". . . the essential 
character of exchange is not altered by the 
employment of a circulating medium, however 
the increased complexity of the facts may 
tend to conceal its nature. ... It is still 
an exchange of commodities and services for 
commodities and services." 



CHAPTER II 
Money Monopoly 

In the eye of the capitalist, nothing appears 
more objectionable than leaving his money lie 
idle, or doing nothing. 

Yet, considered as a tool of the industrial 
process, by means of which to effect the re- 
ciprocal exchange of services and productions 
between man and man, idle money is far from 
being as idle and harmless as would appear. 

The capitalist's idle money is engaged in 
rebellion at the fulfillment of the moral obli- 
gation to reciprocate the buying of men's ser- 
vices and productions. Jointly with all other 
similar money, it is exerting a pressure of want 
and suffering upon the masses, under which 
they are compelled to submit to its extor- 
tionate terms of service — its demand for interest 
profits. 

Idle money is a hand at the throat of indus- 
try, helping busy money to rifle its pockets. 
It is just as busy as busy money. It keeps 
countless numbers out of work, busy helping 

26 



MONEY MONOPOLY 27 

the capitalist to keep down wages sufficiently 
to leave him his margin of interest profits. 

In reality, the idle man is serving the capitalist 
as truly as is the man at work. He is the buga- 
boo that frightens the men at work into sub- 
mission to the terms of capital. He is the 
specter that keeps all toilers on the rack of 
torture in one eternal state of fret and worry. 
For the man at work is ever on the verge of 
idleness, and the idle man on the verge of 
demoralization and degeneracy. It is upon 
these that the thumbscrews of capital are 
constantly being turned to enforce submission 
to its extortionate demands. 

We cannot evade the fact that the process 
of Capitalism is a silent torture rack — a rack 
invisible, whose operators stretch the more 
cruelly for being blind to the awful havoc it 
works. 

In the dreadful realm of industrial society, 
its Shylocks see only the pound of flesh, and 
not the dripping blood and oozing life of those 
they practice on. 



28 THE COMING GOLDEN AGE 

THE STARVATION MANIA 

When the avaricious hoarder starves himself 
and his family in order to amass an income- 
yielding fortune, he little thinks of the other 
men's families whom he also starves, for want 
of reciprocally buying their products or their 
labor. The one family has to starve because 
the other is starved. 

The quantity of useful human energies being 
constantly repressed through the licensed re- 
pudiation of reciprocal buying is problematical; 
though its magnitude, if known, would no doubt 
be amazing. Yet entirely apart from the ener- 
gies repressed in this manner, there is a secondary 
and separate repression to be considered, result- 
ing from the chronic mistrust which the repudi- 
ation of reciprocal buying breeds. 

Dread of being unable to recover in renewed 
income, the money spent, causes the purse 
strings of all classes to be kept abnormally 
tight. This intense and universal aversion to 
buying also clearly accounts for the extreme 
difficulty everywhere encountered in selling 
commodities. John starves himself because 
James will not buy, and James starves himself 
because John will not buy. Unconsciously they 



MONEY MONOPOLY 29 

tie themselves up in a deadlock of mutual 
starvation, whose most acute form is manifested 
during the recurrent periods of industrial de- 
pression which attend Capitalism. 

These industrial crises occur at almost regu- 
lar intervals, resulting from cumulative dis- 
crepancies in the exchange process. In periods 
of relative prosperity all classes endeavor to 
take advantage of the larger opportunity to 
save and to amass more or less property as 
well as income-yielding fortunes. The prac- 
tice is accompanied with much speculation, 
stimulated by the fact that property values are 
a capitalization of income and rise or fall 
rapidly as prosperity or depression affects their 
income. The practice, therefore, soon becomes 
contagious, enlisting so many in it as to finally 
allow the volume of accumulating capital to 
outstrip the capacity of trade to support it 
with the income it demands. It becomes a 
case of the last pin breaking the camel's back. 
Property values now cease to rise, beginning to 
rapidly decline and becoming almost unsalable. 
f As soon as capitalists (who are in position 
to be among the first to note the inability of 
industry to continue its usual support of the 
increased volume of capital now demanding 



30 THE COMING GOLDEN AGE 

income) recognize the state of affairs, they take 
alarm, withholding their funds from further 
investment, and realizing on their resources, 
as far as possible. The more money is with- 
held, the more eagerly is it sought, and the 
more tenaciously men hold what they have — 
causing an impression to go abroad that money 
has become scarce, or the supply inadequate. 
The effect is paralyzing to industry and spreads 
into every household, as a general epidemic 
of starvation mania. 

Trade suddenly slackens; and tradesmen, in- 
stead of carrying their usual amount of stock, 
refrain from further purchases as far as they 
can, preferring to let their stock of merchandise 
run down. Each is thinking of his own safety, 
and ignores the consequences to others. With 
a greatly shrunken demand for goods in the 
household, and a still greater shrinkage in the 
demand proceeding from the merchant, fac- 
tories are obliged to close or to work a mere 
fraction of the regular time, swelling the armies 
of the unemployed and pouring into the land 
swarms of tramps, beggars and hoboes, whose 
appearance is like to a pest lighting upon the 
country. 

Bankruptcies, strikes, lockouts, riots, and 



MONEY MONOPOLY 31 

revolutionary outbreaks now become the order 
of the day, while starvation and anarchy be- 
come a standing menace. 

The reign of industrial chaos often continues 
for many years, recovery from industrial pros- 
tration being slow, and coming only after a 
great shrinakge in property valuation and a 
large liquidation of debts and dissipation of 
capital has ensued. 



CHAPTER III 
Land Monopoly 

Capitalism is a vast non-collusive monopoly, 
founded on the division of mankind into a 
possessing class and a class who are dispos- 
sessed. In all its phases, we see surplusage 
on one side confronted by famine on the other. 
The department of land ownership is no ex- 
ception to this rule. 

In granting land titles, as in their issue of 
money, governments ask no questions as to 
the economic use made of these forms of alleged 
wealth. The owner may withhold money from 
circulation, or land from tillage and residential 
occupation, as long as he pleases; or he may 
exact what prices he w^ill for them, or for their 
use by tenants. His use of these tools and 
accessories to industrial co-operation may be 
either productive, or obstructive and predatory; 
and it is nobody's business. 

The land owner, therefore, impelled by the 
same cupidity that inspires the money monop- 
olist, enforces his uniform demand for all the 

32 



LAND MONOPOLY 33 

traffic will bear. Yet he charges no more than 
the current interest rate. This paradoxical feat 
he performs by constantly readapting land 
valuations so that their net income would be 
equal to what would be the interest, at the 
current rate, on the latest valuation. « 

Screwing up his rents and valuations on the 
basis of all the traffic will bear, no improvement 
in industry or in social conditions is possible 
but that the land owner quickly takes advantage 
of it by exacting proportionally higher rents 
and land prices, arrogating to himself the rights 
of a side partner in every enterprise and a 
co-worker in every act of production. 

In order to acquire free land, or a free use 
of land, one is obliged to accept the doom of 
ostracism in the wilderness, far from the haunts 
of men. One must not look to partake of the 
benefits of industrial co-operation, or of asso- 
ciation with his fellow men, unless by con- 
cession to the land monopolist of his toll of 
interest profits. 

There is no leveler equal to the capitalist's 
demand for all the traffic will bear, which, in the 
arena of non-collusive land monopoly, reduces 
all land tracts to one common level of desir- 
ability. Let one tract lift up its head above 



34 THE COMING GOLDEN AGE 

the rest through the slightest advantage in 
utility, and at once the advantage is obliterated 
by proportionally raising both the rental and 
the sale price of the land. 

One can see the effect of this leveling dis- 
position all over the world. Gaze in what 
direction we will, on whatever continent or 
in whatever country, we will see population 
dispersed promiscuously, as if without the 
slightest rational guidance. Here we see human 
beings huddled together in frightful congestion, 
and yonder in hopeless and woeful isolation. 
Here they are isolated, to grow up in the scant 
environments of village life; there in swarm- 
ing masses, immersed in the fetid atmosphere 
of city slums; here living as squatters in the 
path of merciless floods, and there exposed to 
the belching fumes of the death-dealing volcano. 

Thus we see the people of this earth dis- 
persed over an area perhaps twenty times as 
extensive as a rational distribution would re- 
quire, and yet everyone jostling his neighbor 
as if this broad earth were really overcrowded. 
It has actually fastened in many minds the 
delusion that this earth is overpopulated and 
that, in self-defense, the birth rate should be 
reduced. 



LAND MONOPOLY 35 

In our own land, from gulf to lakes, and 
from Atlantic to Pacific, we have an over- 
whelming multiplicity of villages, towns and 
cities threaded over a length of possibly fifty 
times the mileage of roadways that a normal 
distribution would require; while the inter- 
vening lands are largely uncultivated, or occu- 
pied by farms that are both far from each other 
and from the consumers of their productions. 

What vast energies are wasted in conquering 
these superfluous distances we impose on our- 
selves! What a tax it puts on every step we 
take, afoot or by other modes of locomotion! 
What a superfluity of vehicles it calls for! 
What a cost in the construction and main- 
tenance of roadways! What loss in time and 
in the cost of travel by rail as well as in the 
carriage of freights! What a loss in human 
lives, and in the mutilation of bodies it incurs! 
We grumble and grumble, and go on viewing 
all these inflictions as necessary evils — condi- 
tions that must always prevail. 

In the development of every village, town 
and city, we can discern traces of the same 
evil influence. The village straggles; the town 
has its scattered suburbs; and the city has its 
fringe of unsettled tracts, pierced here and 



36 THE COMING GOLDEN AGE 

there with half-settled streets, and its con- 
gested centers known as slums. How long it 
is before improvements appear in the out- 
lying districts; and how costly the superfluous 
street mileage renders them! The whole must 
be paid for, whether the number of families 
to benefit by it be few or many, even though 
only a third or a fifth as many as it might have 
served. All this applies to the construction 
and maintenance of sidewalk and street pave- 
ments; the piping of streets for gas, water and 
sewerage; their cleaning, sprinkling and their 
fire and police protection. 

Then, as fast as the town evolutes into the 
city, and these sparse districts become more 
settled, up rise the rents, both for residence 
and business properties — the latter swelling 
into fabulous dimensions. Everyone know^s of 
the high cost of store rents, which the mer- 
cantile class pays and charges up to the public 
in the prices imposed on their wares. There is 
no industrial disorder w r hose burden does not 
finally fall upon the shoulders of the toiler, 
heedless of how many of this class are crushed 
underneath. 

It is hard to see what the obstructive tactics 



LAND MONOPOLY 37 

of the money hoarder have done for industry 
to justify the hoarder's exactions; without his 
intervention, money had always circulated so 
that all persons would have had its service 
without price and without the repression of so 
much valuable human energies. The same also 
applies to the obstructive tactics of the land 
monopolist. The land would have been there 
and would have been at the disposal of all who 
had need of it, without suffering the tax of land 
rents and of the wanton dispersion imposed 
by the obstructive operations of the land 
monopolist. 



CHAPTER IV 

Mercantile Monopoly 

If land monopoly interposes between man 
and man a plague of interminable distances; 
if it taint cities with obnoxious slum centers; 
if it expel countless numbers to the unsettled 
wilds, and to farm and village isolation; if 
it tax the people with the cost of maintaining 
a five- and ten-fold superfluity of mileage in 
railways and country roadways; if it impose 
on the urban resident expenditures equally as 
excessive; mercantile monopoly has its own 
orgies of extravagance, rivaling in every re- 
spect those of land monopoly. 

Instead of interposing between man and man 
superfluous distances, this branch of monopoly 
interposes an overwhelming body of many 
times duplicated and superfluous middleman 
enterprises, varying in dimensions, and in every 
degree of duplication, and manned with corps 
upon corps of duplicated and superfluous em- 
ployees. 

38 



MERCANTILE MONOPOLY 39 

In possession of this multiplicity of establish- 
ments is hoarded an inordinate surplusage of 
wares, kept there by the congested state of 
trade, in spite of the emptiness visible in the 
hand-to-mouth conducted households of the 
people. 

Owing to this unequal distribution of mer- 
cantile wares — the virtual subsistence of the 
people — its owners wield the power of non- 
collusive monopoly, or Capitalism. Through 
possession of this power, they are enabled to 
impose on consumers all the cost of the storage, 
handling and selling of these wares, and also 
interest and every ordinary expense incurred, 
until their delivery and payment is effected. 

Unless assured of his interest profits, in the 
prices he pays for wares, and in those he de- 
mands, the merchant refuses to either buy or 
sell. He says to both producer and consumer: 
pay my toll, or starve. 

In the arena of trade, the practice also is to 
exact all the traffic will bear, reconciling it with 
the demand for the current interest rate by 
constantly so readapting the valuation of each 
investment as to keep the net profits just equal 
to the current interest on the latest valuation. 



40 THE COMING GOLDEN AGE 

Non-collusively united in their uniform de- 
mand for all the traffic will bear, enterprises of 
every dimension, large or small, compete on a 
common level in the prices they offer or demand 
— the pushcart and the shoestring seller holding 
their own in the shadow of the great depart- 
ment stores. It seems paradoxical, like the 
survival of the hare and the jackal along with 
the tiger and the lion, and is accountable only 
by the fact that the greater concerns keep on 
capitalizing their investments the higher, as fast 
as net profits become larger than current in- 
terest on the investment. In this manner, 
capitalized to the utmost, it is always a struggle 
to earn the current interest, just as it is always 
a struggle for the petty concern to maintain 
itself. 

It is the practice of capitalizing their estab- 
lishments at their highest that keeps the profit 
margins of trade so inordinately large, and that 
stimulates the great multiplicity of duplicated 
and superfluous establishments. 

It is these enormous profit margins that draw 
so much energy into the work of diverting trade 
from one merchant to another, and that con- 
stitute a general breeding pool for polluting 
graft. There is indeed not a single vocation 



MERCANTILE MONOPOLY 41 

or profession that is not contaminated by their 
influence. 

COMMERCIAL COMPETITION 

We have already seen to what extent indus- 
try is dominated by monopoly rather than, as 
supposed, by competition. 

Though toiler competes with toiler, and 
capitalist with capitalist, it is monopoly that 
governs the relation borne by the capitalist to 
the toiler. As either producer, or as consumer, 
the toiler has to contribute the capitalist's toll 
of interest profits — the fruit of the upas tree 
of monopoly. 

In the great struggle to place capital and 
to divert trade, some succeed in more efficiently 
placing their capital and in commanding a 
relatively larger amount of trade than others 
do; and in this respect, they compete with 
one another; but in their relation to the toiler, 
the very profit margins they derive to that 
extent imply the substitution of competition by 
monopoly. 

To the speculative business man there is 
ever present the brilliant opportunity to turn 
each dollar of added net profits into fifteen or 



42 THE COMING GOLDEN AGE 

twenty of added capital. If he succeeds in 
adding a thousand a year to the net profits, 
he is liable to realize as much as fifteen or 
twenty thousand in added capital — his estab- 
lishment becoming rated at so much higher a 
valuation. 

Impelled by the capital-making incentive, and 
spurred by the prodigious sums constantly 
pressing for outlet in the form of business loans, 
and as likely to be used against him by his 
rivals, the merchant is ever seeking to be first 
in taking advantage of offers, so far as his 
credit will permit. 

In the perpetual warfare of trade, all the 
funds assembling in the banks, whence they 
seek outlet, are so much commercial ammuni- 
tion collectively forced upon them through the 
attitude of antagonism in which they are 
aligned. The bulk of the funds are therefore 
employed in trade-diverting efforts, enlisting all 
the arts of persuasion, both by voice and by 
alluring representations in the form of news- 
paper and magazine advertising; in magnifi- 
cent window displays; in dazzling signs and 
flaming billboards; in the fanfarade of street 
parades and band music; and in scores of 
other forms of attraction, ostentation and appeal. 



MERCANTILE MONOPOLY 43 

Immense fortunes are constantly sunk in en- 
deavors to establish new or enlarge the scope 
of existing enterprises, causing the great number 
of already excessive establishments to be con- 
stantly augmented. 

What matters it if armies of highly expensive 
salesmen are daily dispatched to all quarters 
of the globe, duplicating each other's lines and 
routes in tenfold superfluity? What matters 
it if myriads of canvassing agents are sent forth 
to besiege households in city, town, and vil- 
lage, and also on the farm? What matters 
it if cities are filled with an array of many 
times duplicated concerns, each supplied with 
a duplicated equipment and a duplicated force 
of assistants, from its clerks, stenographers, 
and accountants to its collectors, porters and 
delivery men? 

What a comedy scene the realm of trade 
exhibits, in its licensed trade repudiation con- 
stantly repressing trade, while simultaneously 
every strategy and resource of persuasion and 
diplomacy is invoked to secure more! 

In this topsy turvy realm, great income- 
yielding fortunes are the prizes offered to those 
who succeed in smothering the largest amount 



44 THE COMING GOLDEN AGE 

of trade, while everyone is starving for want 
of it. Are not its interest profits the reward 
offered for the repudiation of reciprocal buying? 
Did not this repudiation impoverish and dis- 
possess and keep impoverished and dispossessed 
the multitudes, would men have the power to 
collect these pernicious tolls? Would people 
pay exorbitant rents if they owned their own 
homes? Were they all proprietors, instead of 
denuded outcasts, would they pay for the use 
of wealth, that they had at their service without 
price? 

Is it not obvious that in this branch of non- 
collusive monopoly, as in money monopoly and 
in land monopoly, it is the license to withhold 
money and wealth from their normal uses and 
possessors, that gives rise to capital and its 
predatory power, and that the mere fact of 
having this power does not, viewed in con- 
nection with the hoarding through which it em- 
anates, justify its exactions? Surely neither the 
obstructive acts preceding, nor the pervertive 
results following, as the accompaniment of com- 
mercial Capitalism, are such as to justify 
interest profitSo 



CHAPTER V 

The Toll of Capitalism 

Capitalism is only another name for non- 
collusive monopoly, derived through the license 
permitting of the unlimited repudiation of 
reciprocal buying. It is the bane of industry 
and the curse of our crude, unreciprocal Mon- 
etarism. 

In all its departments, whether in the monop- 
oly of money, of lands, or of mercantile wealth, 
it presents itself as a great surplusage of wealth 
confronting a proportional scarcity or famine 
among the masses. In each of them its mode 
of operation begins with undue obstruction and 
terminates with further perversion, accompanied 
by wholesale extortion imposed in the name 
of service. 

In each of the three great branches of non- 
collusive monopoly, we therefore see tremendous 
losses incurred by perversive influences, in 
addition to those suffered in the form of the 
extortion of interest profits. Between the vast 
repression of energies through repudiation and 

45 



46 THE COMING GOLDEN AGE 

mistrust, through the cumulative discrepancies 
that breed industrial crises, and the universal 
trade hunger developed under its trade license, 
and spurring the nations to endless wars, we 
have an appalling array of losses and sufferings 
for which Capitalism is accountable: and when 
to these we add the costs entailed by the inter- 
position of the superfluous distances in its 
perverted distribution of population, and its 
injection into the arena of trade of the count- 
less numbers of duplicated and superfluous 
enterprises, the toll of evil attributable to 
Capitalism passes all bounds. 

In the very face of this overwhelming record 
of evil, Capitalism, as an institution, over- 
shadows all other branches of organized society. 
By the side of this Gargantuan monster, church 
and state, press and forum, bench and bar, 
are so many pigmies crawling between its feet. 

Of what toll Capitalism levies in the stunting, 
distorting, and perverting of man, both phys- 
ically and mentally; of all those whom it has 
harried and worried into premature graves; 
and of all those whom it has maimed and mur- 
dered in the wars incited by the lust of gain 
it fosters, it is vain to attempt a reckoning. 



THE TOLL OF CAPITALISM 47 

Their immensity is such as to exceed our powers 
of conception. But of the cost of interest profits, 
we may make a fairly reliable calculation. 

Since each of the branches of non-collusive 
monopoly emanates from a common source, 
and is uniformly gauged by the same license and 
the same standard of all the traffic will bear, 
and by the same current interest rate, we may 
safely assume that a result derived from a test 
in one branch will suffice as the criterion for 
all the rest. 

In making a calculation, we therefore take 
land monopoly as a basis, using house rents, 
with which all are familiar, as an example. 

In estimating the cost of house rent, we will 
assume a house costing $2,000; the ground on 
which it stands, $1,000; the interest rate 6 
per cent; and the cost of house wear, 4 per cent. 
On this basis, the bill for house rent would be 
as follows : 

Ground rent (6% on $1,000) $ 60.00 
Building rent (6% on $2,000) 120.00 
Building wear (4% on $2,000) 80.00 



Total 260.00 

Of this total, it will be remarked, $180 is for 



48 THE COMING GOLDEN AGE 

interest on invested capital, while only $80 is 
for valid service — the wear cost of the building. 

By this criterion, the only element of service 
derived by the tenant is the wear cost, $80 — 
a sum less than one-third as much as the rent. 

If in this branch of service the toll of Capi- 
talism is more than two-thirds of the amount 
charged, can one be far from the truth in 
assuming it to be equally as much in the re- 
maining branches of non-collusive monopoly? 
Are we at all exaggerating the amount of the 
extortion if we conclude that interest profits 
take fully two-thirds of the product of labor? 

Nor is this conclusion at all surprising, in 
view of the quantity of capital that is purely 
fictitious, representing only monopoly, and the 
quantity also that consists of duplicated ma- 
terial wealth, superfluous, and economically 
as fictitious as any monopoly value. 

Yet after all, this tremendous cost of interest 
profits is only one item among the array of 
injuries inflicted by Capitalism. It is the 
smallest item — its toll in murder and corrup- 
tion eluding measurement. 



CHAPTER VI 

The Philosophy of Value 

Values reflect the verdicts arrived at in the 
competition to either secure or dispose of labor 
or its products — a competition in which are 
pitted against each other the respective pref- 
erences and aversions of the hundreds of mil- 
lions of participants in the co-operation of 
industry — their minds and moods, and all 
attending circumstances, interacting upon each 
other. It is by these verdicts that the move- 
ments of industry are guided. 

Value is the monetary expression of the pro- 
portion in which one commodity will exchange 
for others; but it is not therefrom to be as- 
sumed that what a commodity exchanges for is 
its true equivalent — its normal or real value. 
If the conditions under which exchanges take 
place are unfair, values will be false. 

Where society is divided into classes of 
possessors, and dispossessed, and where there is 
no enforcement of reciprocal buying, the amount 
of money given for labor, and the quantity 

49 



50 THE COMING GOLDEN AGE 

of productions given for money, will deviate 
from true equivalence to the extent of what is 
diverted to interest profits. 

Labor values, under our unreciprocal Mone- 
tarism, are true only as compared with each other, 
and product values also only as compared with 
each other; and yet is labor so undervalued, 
and are products so overvalued, that, as has 
already been demonstrated, labor realizes less 
than one-third of what it should. Its commercial 
value is less than one-third of its economic 
or real value. 

It is only where reciprocal buying is enforced, 
and where the proprietary status of the toiler 
is maintained, that real, normal values can be 
determined. 

DEMAND AS A FACTOR IN VALUE 

While it is true that labor is apparently the 
only valid constituent of productions — all other 
constituents, apart from demand for them, rep- 
resenting monopoly, it is equally true that labor 
alone is unable to impart to productions the 
smallest particle of value. 

Were everybody to contribute labor, and no- 
body to contribute demand for its products, an 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF VALUE 51 

output piled mountain high would possess no 
value, for all its quantity. Let demand for 
commodities shrink, and note how values will 
also shrink. Let demand cease, and values will 
also forthwith cease. 

Labor and demand are the two vital and 
co-ordinate elements needed to impart to com- 
modities a genuine value. 

It is not enough that a person contributes 
his labor, if he does not also contribute a pro- 
portional demand for productions through which 
demand to justify its value. Unless so justified, 
his contribution of labor is really valueless. 
That others, by buying in excess, may cover his 
deficiency, is of no avail. It does not excuse 
him for foraging on values that others have 
created and have been deprived of in being 
displaced by the forager — as the direct conse- 
quence of his deficient buying. 

Too much stress cannot be laid on the im- 
portance of requiring of every participant in in- 
dustry the contribution of a demand for pro- 
ductions equal in volume to the quantity of 
labor or service he sells. It is for each par- 
ticipant to justify the value of the labor be 
sells. He must not be permitted to forage on 



52 THE COMING GOLDEN AGE 

values that others create. Our industrial sys- 
tem should harbor no form of thievery. 

The capitalist, both in his original acquisi- 
tion, and in the constant enlargement of his 
principal, is foraging upon values that the masses 
create. His vast abstentions create no demand 
and no value; and his vast investments respond 
only to a demand that others create by an 
excessive consuming forced upon them for want 
of reciprocal buying of their services — most of 
it tributary consuming — the payment of interest 
profits — from which they derive no benefit. 

Nor does the capitalist, in consuming from 
his income of interest profits contribute any 
legitimate demand for productions. He is merely 
a parasitic consumer, like the wolf devouring the 
farmer's sheep. The farmer wiio contributes 
this support to the wolf, and the toiler who 
contributes the capitalist's interest profits, are 
the real, the economic consumers and makers 
of the demand. Paying for the pie — not merely 
eating it — determines who is the economic con- 
sumer. Parasitic consumers help nobody. 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF VALUE 53 

NATIONAL VALUE STANDARDS 

There are many influences entirely apart from 
individual effort that enter into the determina- 
tion of values, and that are social and often 
national in character. 

Most potential of these in its malign influence 
is money hoarding, unrelieved by capitalistic 
investment, which stifles industry, or at least 
arrests its progress. Examples of its effects 
are visible in the arrest of development that has 
until quite recently engulfed most Oriental 
countries. 

Such a stifling effect is also often to be 
attributed to a volume of capital demanding 
support from a country whose industrial stand- 
ards are too low to bear the burden. The 
volume of its capital may not be very large, 
and yet may be inordinately excessive, causing 
a chronic paralysis of industry. 

Capitalism is a compromise with money 
hoarding, and is the better alternative, though 
extremely burdensome, if viewed from the 
standpoint that hoarding may be prevented with- 
out cost j as will hereafter be shown. 

Nor are either unrelieved money hoarding, or 
excessive volumes of capital, the only social 



54 THE COMING GOLDEN AGE 

and national influences that materially affect 
the productive efficiency of labor. The char- 
acter of national laws, customs, general and 
technical education, progress in inventions and 
discoveries, and many other causes materially 
affect for better or worse the productive effi- 
ciency of labor and the returns it locally yields. 

Since also industrial co-operation aims to 
convert labor into subsistence products, the 
effect of these diverse influences is manifested 
in differentiating in varying degrees the relative 
value of labor as compared with that of pro- 
ductions. 

Those influences that tax and impede in- 
dustry, such as money hoarding and the ac- 
companying levy of interest profits, simul- 
taneously lower labor and raise product values; 
while those that make for material progress, 
such as inventions and discoveries, act in the 
opposite manner, raising labor and lowering 
product values. 

The influences that make for material progress 
and thereby enhance the productive efficiency of 
its labor, and those of money hoarding and 
Capitalism, that impair productive efficiency, 
are present in every country in greatly varying 
degrees, giving rise to distinct national value 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF VALUE 55 

standards in each. In each country the entire 
range of product values differs from those in 
other countries, so that productions, like for 
like and kind for kind, have a different value in 
each country. They are not isolated price 
variations, such as might arise from varying 
individual capacities, but variations that are 
distinctly national, and requiring treatment as 
such. 

Since impairment of national productive ef- 
ficiency can find expression only in reducing 
labor and raising product values, it might be 
inferred that the productions of a country of 
inferior productive efficiency must sell at higher 
prices than those at which they sell elsewhere; 
but this is far from true. In foreign trade, 
it is not the cost to the home consumers, but 
the factory cost, and that at its export depots, 
that determines a country's ability to sell. 
Owing also to the universal practice of adapting 
profit margins to all the traffic will bear, and, 
under the greater pressure to undersell im- 
posed by the more congested state of the 
home trade, the productions of such countries 
are usually offered at lower prices than those 
of other countries. Its lower prices are not, 



56 THE COMING GOLDEN AGE 

however, based on either ability or intention to 
reciprocate buying in its foreign trade; and 
were reciprocal buying made the condition gov- 
erning the trade, it would not be able to trade 
with countries of higher national value standards. 



CHAPTER VII 

Unreciprocal Foreign Trade 

National value standards relate to the whole 
range of a country's productions; and the wide 
disparity between these standards is far too 
palpable and persistent to admit denial, or to 
be ignored in regulating the conduct of foreign 
trade. 

When labor, in China, grade for grade, per- 
sistently commands no more than about one- 
tenth as much as it does in the United States; 
and when similar, though less radical varia- 
tions, prevail in European countries, both as 
to labor and as to product values, we have a 
fact unaccounted for by current economic the- 
ories. According to the ordinary conception of 
the operation of the law of supply and demand, 
all these national value standard differentiations 
should long since have been resolved into uni- 
form labor and product values all over the 
world, subject only to the slight fluctuations to 
which values are everywhere liable. 

As previously stated, low national value 

57 



58 THE COMING GOLDEN AGE 

standards imply inferior productive efficiency, 
and are far from being a safe criterion in the 
conduct of foreign trade — especially where no 
due provision is made to guard against inter- 
national trade repudiation. The extremely low 
labor values, where productive efficiency is at 
its lowest, enable product values there to be 
relatively lower than elsewhere, though a wider 
relative margin intervenes between its labor 
and its product values, representing the higher 
cost of converting labor into products for the 
home consumer. It is the degree of local trade 
congestion that determines the gradation of its 
product values in comparison with those of 
other countries. 

The great attraction of foreign trade is due 
to the enormous profit margins it offers to 
those who buy by the lowest and sell by the 
highest national value standards, heedless of the 
vast amount of buying it fails to reciprocate. 
I What chance of having its foreign purchases 
reciprocated can a country of high value stand- 
ard have? 

How long would it be before its currency 
supply would be exhausted and its trade re- 
duced to a state of stagnation inviting anarchy; 
or else, if the currency did return, would it not 



UNRECIPROCAL FOREIGN TRADE 59 

be in purchase of its properties, until it finally 
became a dispossessed nation, tributarily de- 
pendent? How long before foreign capitalists 
drew from the country a regular tribute of 
interest and dividends, amounting to the same 
thing as the tribute that conquered nations had 
annually to send to ancient Rome? How long 
before the control of its properties gave to the 
foreign capitalists a control of its politics and 
its government — especially if systematically or- 
ganizing the power of this wealth into political 
machines? 

In the modern world, it is the capitalist who 
is constantly seeking for more tributaries. He 
is the soldier of fortune crying for "open mar- 
kets' ' that he may the more easily invade them 
with the products of low national value stand- 
ards; and by repudiating reciprocal purchases, 
replenish their exhausted monetary supplies by 
purchase of their properties. It is a subtle 
mode of invasion, and one most dangerous to 
the peace of the world: let alone the freedom 
of the nations so invaded. 

There is only one way in which to conduct a 
safe and an honorable foreign trade, and that 



60 THE COMING GOLDEN AGE 

is by rigidly excluding foreign investors and 
maintaining a distinctly local currency — thereby 
confining all trade to a clean exchange of 
products for products. Properties are not a proper 
subject of foreign trade; for a dispossessed 
nation is only a nation in form — a creature of 
foreign despots. 

But how, it will be asked, are prosperous 
countries, whose value standards are high, to 
do any foreign trade, if it is to be made an 
even exchange of products for products? The 
answer will be found in the narrative to follow: 



A NORMAL FOREIGN TRADE 

It was a reciprocal trade of products for 
products we had in our foreign trade during 
the four years of civil war in the United States. 
No properties were during this period alienated, 
while our domestic trade did not in the least 
suffer for want of currency. 

Foreign capitalists mistrusted the outcome 
of the impending war. They consequently 
baulked at further investments, and realized 
on most of those they held — drawing from us 
nearly all the gold we had in circulation. 

Gold was needed to pay for imports; and 



UNRECIPROCAL FOREIGN TRADE 61 

since it was now obtainable only through ex- 
ports, we were obliged to limit our imports to 
the extent of our ability to export. 

We could now have carried on little foreign 
trade, but for the development of a new factor, 
the premium on gold. 

The consumer of imports, in order to benefit 
by the lower foreign value standards, paid the 
premium rather than forego the gains he de- 
rived from the lower foreign markets. 

The premium simultaneously and automat- 
ically acted as a bounty on exports and a tax 
on imports. The premium covered the dis- 
parity between the home and foreign value 
standards. It voiced this disparity; and if the 
disparity had not been real, the consumers of 
imports w^ould never have paid it. The pre- 
mium was at one time so high that it took 
$2.85 in paper to pay for one dollar in gold. 
It equalized the disparity between foreign and 
home value standards, taxing the beneficiaries 
of the foreign markets and compensating the 
exporters w T ho had to sell in the inferior foreign 
markets in order to keep consumers of imports 
supplied with the gold they needed. 

The premium on gold had nothing to do 



62 THE COMING GOLDEN AGE 

with the intrinsic value of our paper as com- 
pared with that of gold; or with the credit of 
the nation. It signified merely that the medium 
of low value standard markets was worth more 
than that of a high value standard market. 
Had we used gold, and foreign countries paper, 
it w^ould have been the paper, as the medium 
of lower markets, that would have risen to a 
premium, and it would have been the gold that 
would have suffered "depreciation " 

Our war currency was a disparity money, 
honestly reflecting the disparities between our 
value standard and the standards prevailing 
abroad — actual disparities that needed recogni- 
tion rather than suppression. 



A REAL PROTECTIVE SYSTEM 

There w^as no weakness and no favoritism 
in our disparity money. It impartially equal- 
ized market disparities, so that all who bene- 
fited by lower foreign markets had to pay 
what this was worth; and all who suffered by 
being compelled to sell in such inferior markets 
were duly compensated therefor. 

The patron of foreign markets had to secure 
his gold and to pay its price. It mattered not 



UNRECIPROCAL FOREIGN TRADE 63 

in what direction he patronized foreign mar- 
kets, whether in foreign travel, in the payment 
of freights and fares to foreign vessel owners, 
in the purchase of imported wares, in paying 
interest and dividends to foreign investors, such 
as was begun after the war, or in any form 
whatsoever of sending or spending money 
abroad. It was a complete protection that was 
afforded, and not a misleading sham, like 
tariffs that cover only a small fraction of the 
sphere of exposure, letting the trade of the 
nation suffer a shrinkage amounting to hundreds 
of millions annually, and leading to such a 
degree of property dispossession that several 
hundreds of millions had annually to be paid 
to foreign capitalists as interest and dividends. J 

The war conditions gave us A Real Pro- 
tective System. It helped us emerge from 
the war in the flush of prosperity, in all but 
the devastated districts. We came out, re- 
taining unimpaired our proprietary status, even 
to retention of as much of our once splendid 
merchant marine as had escaped the enemy. i 

Had we duly understood and appreciated the 
work it did for us, we should, after the war, 
have enacted laws permanently debarring alien 



64 THE COMING GOLDEN AGE 

ownership of our properties and permanently 
retaining our own paper currency. 

The war, unfortunately, was scarcely over, 
when foreign capital came pouring in to ac- 
quire our properties — our bonds, stocks, lands, 
mines, shipping, and other interests. This arti- 
ficial source of monetary supply had the effect 
of steadily lowering the gold premium, and of 
stimulating an undue volume of imports and 
foreign expenditures, as well as of seriously 
impairing our power to export. It kept our 
values artificially high, in view of the fact that 
it depressed our trade, and that it came to us 
as the price of our properties rather than of our 
productions. This was the real source of the 
inflation we suffered from, and not the paper 
money to which it was attributed. 

By the year 1879 the premium on gold had 
fallen to zero; and with its disappearance 
passed away the last vestige of the finest pro- 
tective system a nation ever had. 

By the year 1895 the volume of properties 
alienated had already reached the staggering 
sum of ten thousand millions, including our 
merchant marine; and since then, the nation 
has suffered more than one disaster from the 



IRRECIPROCAL FOREIGN TRADE 65 

sudden withdrawal of our gold supply, made 
by throwing large blocks of the alienated stocks 
upon our markets to supply the foreign owners 
with ready gold. 

We are still deluding ourselves with a high 
tariff wall, that touches only favored spots and 
leaves the larger portion of our foreign trade 
unprotected. Our entire export trade is left 
without a particle of protective compensation 
to cover the disparity between the home and 
foreign value standards. The producers of 
corn, cotton and wheat, as well as of many 
other staples and manufactures, necessarily 
suffer by this unpardonable neglect. We have 
also fostered an undue amount of expenditures 
in foreign travel, except during the interval of 
the Anglo-German war. To no small extent, 
also, are our own value standards abnormally 
lowered, as a result of this lack of due pro- 
tection — a result very misleading. 

In the interest of peace between nation and 
nation, the policy of trade expansion, or in- 
dustrial imperialism, should be abandoned, and 
each nation left to maintain unimpaired its 
industrial autonomy, retaining, for its own 



66 THE COMING GOLDEN AGE 

people all of its home properties, and a dis- 
parity currency that will both interpret dis- 
parities in market standards and protect against 
them. 

When countries unite in maintaining a uni- 
form trade of products for products, and make 
the further repudiation of reciprocal buying in 
foreign trade impossible, the bone of conten- 
tion that inspires so much international dis- 
trust and antagonism will have been removed, 
and the foundation will have been laid for a 
permanent peace between the nations of the 
world. 



CHAPTER VIII 

The Medium of Exchange 

It often happened under Barterism that pre- 
ferred commodities would be accepted as a 
temporary substitute for the articles that the 
recipient really wanted. Chief among these 
preferred commodities were gold and silver, 
which in time became a permanent medium 
of exchange: later on being coined into pieces 
of uniform weight. 

In this manner came money into use, quicken- 
ing the movements of industry, and enormously 
enhancing its productive efficiency. Money 
served as a link, automatically connecting and 
blending into one vast process of industrial co- 
operation the inhabitants of countries far apart 
and spread over the entire earth. It facilitated 
the specialization of labor till the varied forms 
of labor and the variety of productions were 
past reckoning; and it also helped to co-ordi- 
nate all this immensity of varied activities into 
one magnificent mechanism, capable of auto- 
matic expansion as the demands of progress 

67 



68 THE COMING GOLDEN AGE 

called for. It really socialized the industrial 
process, though far from accomplishing the task 
as efficiently as might be desired. 

While materially, money is merely a trans- 
ferable symbol of mathematical quantity, it is 
functionally at once an acknowledgment of ser- 
vice rendered in the production of a general 
output of subsistence products, and a valid 
claim upon the output. 

While, also, governments make it obligatory 
that the money of issue be accepted in return 
for commodities, they do not make it equally 
as obligatory that money be used to redeem by 
purchase the quantity of productions it is a claim 
on. In short, while money is made obligatorily 
redeemable in commodities, commodities are not 
made equally redeemable in money. Many a 
poor wretch has starved to death because money 
would not redeem the commodity of labor he 
had to offer. The capitalist is not slow to 
insist upon the claim his money represents, but 
is invariably blind to the obligation inhering 
in money and inseparable from its claim. 

When the hoarding capitalist diverts money 
from the due fulfillment of this obligation, em- 
ploying it as a perpetual loan and investment 



THE MEDIUM OF EXCHANGE 69 

fund, he takes a step wholly foreign to the 
purposes and the normal process of industrial 
co-operation. Instead of acquiring subsistence 
products through the contribution of productive 
service, he substitutes acquisition through ex- 
tortion. He places himself in the position of 
the Ishmaelite who lived by plunder prior to 
the recognition of property rights. He is, in 
fact, an economic Ishmaelite. 



THE COMPOSITION OF MONEY 

It is not strange that the moneyed class 
should so long have persisted in their demand 
that only a commodity possessed of intrinsic 
value — a medium therefore self -redeemed — could 
constitute money, and that any other medium 
of exchange must be made redeemable in the 
commodity money. 

The countries of lowest value standards would 
always be able to retain in circulation a com- 
modity money. As the medium acceptable in 
the lowest markets, a commodity money became 
everywhere acceptable — a fact giving to it tre- 
mendous prestige. It was good everywhere, and 
that was what the. moneyed class desired. 
They asked nothing further. 



70 THE COMING GOLDEN AGE 

To these men, the home market, if the national 
value standard was high, was a good enough 
place in which to make their fortunes; but it 
was always the foreign markets that were the 
righteous standard of values. 

Whenever the money of the home market 
refused to remain at a parity with the medium 
of the cheapest markets, the government was 
immediately called on to come to the rescue. 
It must keep its money at a parity with the 
medium of the cheapest markets. If the nor- 
mal buying capacity of its dollar was abroad 
worth only fifty cents, the home government 
must make it worth one dollar. It must in- 
duce foreign capitalists to buy its properties 
in such quantities as to flood it with gold, 
or the medium of the cheap markets, and 
thereby to apparently cheapen the gold, or 
else raise the national paper to its level. In 
this manner, by substituting the sale of prop- 
erties for that of products, its industrial con- 
ditions are impaired, its value standards lowered, 
and the wonderful feat of maintaining its 
money at a parity is achieved. 

Whenever foreign capitalists hesitate at buy- 
ing the nation's properties in the ordinary way, 
and the parity of its money is threatened, na- 



THE MEDIUM OF EXCHANGE 71 

tions contract loans, selling their bonds to re- 
plenish their diminished gold supply — an in- 
stance of which occurred during the second ad- 
ministration of Grover Cleveland, when bonds, 
in the amount of one hundred millions, were 
sold in order to replenish the gold supply. 

No more deceptive doctrine has ever been 
promulgated than that of a universal parity, 
or one that has worked more mischief in be- 
traying nations into the power of foreign 
capital. There can be no parity of disparities. 
An honest money must recognize disparities and 
must meet them. It cannot, ostrich-like, close 
its eyes to the truth and surrender the nation 
to the greedy ambitions of foreign capitalists. 
It must not betray the nation into bondage. 



RECIPROCAL MONETARISM 

The hunger of human want is one that con- 
tinues from day to day without cessation, let 
it be appeased as often as we will. It becomes 
a menace to life and to the normal development 
of man, if hunger remains long ungratified. 

The task of industry being to gratify this 
everlasting hunger, the service of money should 



72 THE COMING GOLDEN AGE 

be made more than spasmodic. It should be 
free and continuous. It should never be per- 
mitted to be diverted from normal circulation — 
from the alternate purchases of labor and of 
subsistence in endless succession. It should not 
be allowed to go into hoard, and thereafter to 
refuse its service save when its extortionate 
exactions are conceded. 

The money question is far less one of com- 
position or of volume, than of integrity of 
circulation. Its use as an implement for ob- 
structing and taxing industry must be abolished. 
It must be given more power to serve, and less 
to tyrranize and plunder. 

Had a normal monetary circulation always, 
from the beginning, been enforced, deficiencies 
would have driven no man to part with his 
birthright of proprietary wealth; nor would 
there have been any men possessed of a sur- 
plusage of money with which to purchase and 
to divert proprietary wealth from the possession 
of the masses. 

Had Monetarism from the start been made 
a reciprocal exchange process, the story of 
history need not have been written in blood 
and misery. Capitalism would not have lifted 



THE MEDIUM OF EXCHANGE 73 

its head, like a serpent from the grass, to curse 
the world. The relationship of man to man 
would not have been reduced to one of deadly 
antagonism. 

To this twentieth century has come the 
task of expelling from its garden of industry 
this hideous serpent. It is not a creature that 
that belongs there. It is something wholly 
foreign to the process of industrial co-operation. 
Pirate ships are no less foreign to sea traffic 
than is Capitalism to a normal state of in- 
dustry. The mandate of this century will 
therefore be that Capitalism must go. 

But how? How is society to rid itself of 
this monster? In the logical way, by enforcing 
reciprocalism. Capitalists owe a long overdue 
debt of reciprocal buying, as large as the prin- 
cipal they hold as capital. Let them repay 
this debt by consuming their principal. In that 
way it will pass into the earnings of the masses 
and thence into their normal birthright of 
proprietary wealth, details of which transfer, 
as also of how this wealth is to thereafter be 
made inalienable, will be furnished in a later 
chapter. 

Accompanying this diversion of capital into 



74 THE COMING GOLDEN AGE 

proprietary wealth, provision would also have 
to be made for the enforcement of reciprocal 
buying in all further participation in industry. 

In order effectually to enforce reciprocal 
buying, a supplementary currency will be needed, 
to be given by each recipient of money to the 
payer thereof. Without a supply of this sup- 
plementary currency to give, no man would be 
able to sell and take in money. We will there- 
fore call it sell money. 

With sell money in circulation, no man would 

be able to acquire a loanable surplusage of 

money. As soon as his proprietary supply of 

sell money ran out, he could take in no more 

regular money, for want of sell money to give 

the payer. He would then be forced to spend 

regular money, in order to secure a fresh stock 

of sell money which would be needed in order 

to be able to take in more regular money. His 

spending would thereafter have to keep pace with 

his taking in of money. He would have to 

let other people take in money as well as himself. 

Every participant in industry would now 

have to justify his participation and also the 

value of the labor he sold. 

A free and continuous circulation of money 
would now be in operation — all persons being 



THE MEDIUM OF EXCHANGE 75 

obliged to spend money practically as fast as 
they took it in. Neither drouth nor pestilence, 
flood nor hurricane, nor any other untoward 
event, could unduly retard the energetic flow 
of the circulating medium. There w r ould be 
no more industrial crises, and no more trade 
hunger to precipitate bloody and disgraceful 
wars. Evils innumerable that have seemed to 
be inseparable from man, w r ould now be dwin- 
dling and disappearing, steadily transforming the 
character of human society.* 

* For further details relating to Reciprocal Monetarism, see Part IL 



CHAPTER IX 
Past Industrial Systems 

Communal groups, evolved from family into 
patriarchal and tribal dimensions, were no 
doubt the earliest form of industrial associa- 
tion. The eldest in the family, the patriarch, 
usually ruled until tribal dimensions had been 
attained, when successive chieftains superseded 
him. A community of religious belief or senti- 
ment was often the basis of their organization. 

Various types of organization were developed, 
and each handed down from one generation to 
the next. Their stereotyped plans, however, 
were too rigid to admit of that automatic ex- 
pansion that both Barterism and Monetarism 
were capable of. The two latter were systems 
of co-operation through exchange, whereas the 
communal groups were arbitrarily conducted or- 
ganizations. The communal groups were insular, 
whereas both Barterism and Monetarism reached 
out to unite in their system toilers of all lands. 
Relatively, the communal groups were static, 
like colonies of bees, ants or beavers. 

76 



PAST INDUSTRIAL SYSTEMS 77 

Communal groups have recurred at intervals 
down to the present century, acting as a har- 
bor of refuge for those to whom the violence 
and treachery of Monetarism were repugnant. 
The communal conception is still alive, endeav- 
oring to supplant current Monetarism with some 
form of Collectivism. 

The most successful of these groups was 
probably that of the Essenes, a religious sect 
flourishing in Palestine during a period of four 
centuries, beginning about the year 200 b.c. 
Of its merits as an industrial organization, little 
is known aside from w r hat may be inferred 
from the fact of its long duration. 

Another remarkable communal organization 
was that of the pre-Columbian Peruvians, whose 
Inca rulers assigned tasks and both gathered 
and dispensed provisions among a people vari- 
ously estimated at from three to fifteen millions, 
and dispersed along the slopes of the Andes 
over a territory hundreds of miles in length. 
Operated by the Inca class, under personal 
supervision of the Inca himself, who possessed 
absolute authority, the system is reported to 
have been highly successful, though conducted 
without the help of money or even a written 
language. As long as the wants of the people 



78 THE COMING GOLDEN AGE 

were few and the rule of the Incas could go 
on undisturbed, the system was adequate; but 
for modern needs and conditions it could not 
apply. 

What uniformly condemns communal sys- 
tems is the necessarily limited dimensions to 
which they are fundamentally committed: ad- 
mitting of little specialization of labor, and as 
a consequence, of no high degree of productive 
efficiency. In the disposition of their output 
of productions, and in the assignment of tasks, 
these organizations encounter much dissatis- 
faction and difficulty, seldom being possible 
without a despotic authority over the members. 

If communal organization preceded all other 
forms, as we have reason to assume, Barterism 
could have evolved only through the detach- 
ment of artisans here and there from their 
respective groups. These would thereafter trade 
their own surplus products, both with the groups 
and with each other. The detached members 
would thus gradually form part of a vast body 
of similarly detached group members, develop- 
ing a higher degree of labor specialization and 
attaining a larger degree of liberty than under 
the groups. They, in this manner, became 



PAST INDUSTRIAL SYSTEMS 79 

members of a vast exchange system — a system 
of automatic co-operation widening in scope 
until it embraced all the nations. Against the 
infinitely larger organization of Barterism, com- 
munal groups were unable to compete, gradually 
disappearing, and only in rare instances reviving 
or repeating themselves. 

Under Barterism, each individual was a dis- 
tinct type of the system in its entirety. He 
was a separate unit, capable of moving hither 
and thither, bearing with him his full belongings, 
and capable of enlarging them to suit his 
needs — so far, at least, as not to be prevented 
from doing so through any form of economic 
displacement. He was an assimilative unit in 
the industrial organism, closely resembling what 
the cell is in the animal body. 

Under Barterism there was nothing to seduce 
from the individual his proprietary outfit. 
Its exchanges were not subject to those dis- 
crepancies by which the masses have under 
current Monetarism been dispossessed. Its ex- 
changes were necessarily reciprocal, preserving 
a more harmonious distribution of wealth. 

What doomed Barterism was the difficulty 
encountered in effecting direct exchanges: for 
seldom could one find another person offering 



80 THE COMING GOLDEN AGE 

just what one needed, and yet desiring just 
what one had to give in return for it. This 
necessarily made the process very cumbrous 
and costly. The use of money, by facilitating 
exchanges, also cheapened their cost, and so 
multiplied them as to cause a great increase in 
productive efficiency and thereby the triumph 
of Monetarism. 



UNRECIPROCAL MONETARISM 

How Monetarism came to supersede Barter- 
ism, and the character of the revolution it 
affected, has already been explained. Money 
was the implement for furthering the socializa- 
tion of the industrial process begun in Bar- 
terism. It helped to organize and expand the 
movements of industry till all the years and 
all the people, and all the territory of this 
earth were merged into one gigantic organism, 
capable of self-expansion in all directions. 

What power there is in Monetarism, one can 
only conceive, after considering the vitality it 
displays in the face of all the discordant ele- 
ments bred by its subjection to so much repu- 
diation of reciprocal buying: the clash of com- 
mercial rivalries; the strife between employer 



PAST INDUSTRIAL SYSTEMS 81 

and employee; the recurrent shocks from in- 
dustrial crises and revolutions; the decay and 
downfall of government after government; and 
the endless succession of upheavals that have 
shaken the foundations of society. All this 
reign of rupture and ruin, Monetarism has com- 
bated, surviving to this day, and to this 
day holding the world in its thrall. In spite 
of its terrible incubus of Capitalism, it stands 
here, an impregnable tower of strength — a vast 
system, needing still to be tamed by recipro- 
calization, but absolutely indispensable. 



CHAPTER X 
Socialism and Other Projects 

As heir and successor to political Communism, 
which aimed to apply common ownership of 
all wealth to the industries of nations, Socialism 
has entered the arena of modern politics, pro- 
posing the substitution of our industrial system 
with one in which governments are to own and 
operate all the means and implements of pro- 
duction. 

The Socialist, at the very outset, assumes 
that a normal distribution of wealth is impos- 
sible under private ownership, and is possible, 
under public ownership. How he will be able 
to bulk wealth and yet so operate it as to yield 
a respectable output, he does not deign to 
explain. He takes all this for granted. He 
would desocialize the industrial process and 
content himself with socializing its framework — 
its wealth. 

By what plan his proposed system is to be 
regulated, he is not prepared to say, scorning 

82 



SOCIALISM AND OTHER PROJECTS 83 

definitely outlined plans as Utopian. Yet he has 
the temerity to go before his fellow toilers, 
asking them to unite in his pet project of sup- 
planting the present socialized industrial process 
with one in which there are to be no automatic 
exchanges, for want of a transferable money — 
the organ of socialization. It is like asking 
a man in the rain to trade his umbrella for a 
piece of an umbrella rib. 

Even Columbus had to explain why he 
expected to reach the Indies without dropping 
off the earth. If a person seriously affirms 
himself capable of leaping over the moon, he 
has no right to expect men to believe him, 
without a rational explanation of the manner 
in which he is to perform his stunt. 

To what extent has the Socialist explained 
the manner in which he expects to effect the 
vast reorganization of industry involved in his 
proposal? 

He scorns the discarded short clothes of 
diminutive Communism as unsuitable for his 
own gigantic proportions; but what does he 
propose to substitute for them? 

A thing, verily, of shreds and patches. 

In place of a definitely outlined plan, he 
presents a front brilliant with expectations, but 



84 THE COMING GOLDEN AGE 

supported alone by faith and unscientific " sci- 
entific" principles — negations representing the 
taboos of economic superstition. 

Automatic competition, in which each indi- 
vidual acts for himself in deciding in what 
direction and on what terms, and w T here and 
when he will deliver his services, and in what he 
is to apply his earned claims on the subsistence 
output — in w T hich the minds of hundreds of mil- 
lions of co-operating toilers interact upon each 
other and give due expression to their individual 
preferences and aversions, and so determine 
values and influence the direction in which all 
efforts shall be applied — all this is to be sup- 
planted by the autocratic direction of a body 
of statisticians — of course, presuming their subtle 
minds capable of meeting the infinite demands 
of the great process they are to supplant. 
These men also are to be dependent on a labor- 
time gauge in determining economic quantities, 
assuming labor alone to be the proper gauge 
of values. 

The use of a transferable money — the tool 
of economic association— is, of course, to be 
discarded on " scientific" suspicion, as unworthy 
of trust. 

The very taboos the Socialist so strenuously 



SOCIALISM AND OTHER PROJECTS 85 

insists on must debar his system from rank as 
an automatic exchange process, leaving it no 
better standing than that enjoyed by early 
communal organizations. These also excluded 
from their process the tax of economic profits, 
as also did Barterism. But it is one thing to 
succeed in excluding economic profits, and quite 
another to attain a high degree of productive 
efficiency. 

Committed to arbitrary modes of operation, 
it is hard to rank Socialism in any other class 
than that of primitive communal society; and 
the burden lies on the Socialist to show how he 
can keep industrial society agoing, with all its 
infinite body of interacting activities. In his 
design to supplant Monetarism with a system 
of industrial arbitrariness, he is asking the world 
to go back thousands of years, 

* No wonder the Socialist leaves definiteness of 
plan to the future, relying on the principles of 
his " scientific" economics ultimately to give 
the structure its shape; and these principles 
are mainly drawn from the voluminous writings 
of Karl Marx. 

In all these writings, we fail to find the 
first trace of a recognition of Monetarism and 



86 THE COMING GOLDEN AGE 

Capitalism as two separate and distinct sys- 
tems — the former productive and competitive, 
while the latter is obstructive and monopolistic 
or predatory. The two systems are everywhere 
treated as a single one, hopelessly perverse. 
Socialists consequently insist on the complete 
substitution of current Monetarism by an en- 
tirely new system, presuming their capacity to 
do so a foregone conclusion. 

From this "scientific" economics we learn 
that money is a commodity. Were this true, 
each separate deal in trade would be an exchange 
of one commodity for another, making all 
trade self -reciprocal. No champion of Capitalism 
could have suggested a doctrine better qualified 
to vindicate this monster of monopolies; for 
if trade is really self-reciprocal, the capitalist 
could owe no debt of reciprocal buying, and 
the manner in which capital had been acquired 
and the masses dispossessed, would be above 
reproach. 

The Socialist's attitude to labor as the only 
factor in value would justify the capitalist's 
participation in industry and all his foraging 
on the values created by the toiling class, whose 
labor he thereby had partially repudiated and 
seriously depreciated in value. His shots at 



SOCIALISM AND OTHER PROJECTS 87 

Capitalism are fired with blank cartridges, 
making noise enough, but doing no harm to 
Capitalism. They resemble the church's de- 
nunciations of the rich while counseling the 
poor to accept their lot submissively. Is the 
Socialist's hereafter any better for the poor than 
the Christian's? 

After a most laborious search for the source 
of toiling class dispossession, Marx concludes 
by attributing it to "the result of a past his- 
torical development, the product of many eco- 
nomical revolutions, of the extinction of a whole 
series of older forms of social production." 

In also searching for the source of the power 
of capital to command interest, Marx did not 
discern the relation the stationary funds bore 
to those in circulation. He could trace it in 
neither the one nor the other, saying in con- 
clusion, in reference to the stationary funds, 
"They become a petrified hoard, and though 
they remain in that state till doomsday, not 
a single farthing would accrue to them." 

Without a trace of the improper source of 
toiling class dispossession and capitalist posses- 
sion, on which the justice or injustice of the 
demand for interest depends, Marx endeavors 
to prove interest to be an extortion by calling 



88 THE COMING GOLDEN AGE 

it a surplus-product — an undelivered portion of 
labor's share in the product output. But if 
capital contributed a service, which Marx did 
not disprove, the portion he called "surplus- 
product" was in reality the price set aside as 
the reward for the services of capital, and was 
in no sense a " surplus-product.' 7 The assump- 
tion by Marx that it was a " surplus-product" 
and therefore an extortion, was like an attempt 
to prove John a thief by calling him " Thieving 
John." 

Of the culminating concentration of wealth 
that Socialists have predicted and look for, 
the history of affluent nations affords no in- 
stance. What they have overlooked has been 
the fact that coincident with the tendency to 
concentration of wealth there is also a powerful 
tendency to diffusion, caused by the common 
demand for all the traffic will bear, which leads 
to irrational dispositions involving both over- 
concentration and over-diffusion. 

Nor is the assumption that Socialism may 
be attained through governmental acquisition 
of one industry at a time, until the entire 
body of industry became socialized, less delusive. 
As long as the number of industries undertaken 



SOCIALISM AND OTHER PROJECTS 89 

by a government were few, apparent gains might 
be derived, though in reality the unappropri- 
ated capital remaining would then absorb to 
itself, in larger returns, what was saved. As 
long as the socializing devices of money and 
competition determined values and dispositions 
in the remaining industries, the help of this 
guidance would enable the government to man- 
age the enterprises it undertook; but as soon 
as it undertook all industries, it would be 
forced to rely on arbitrary direction of affairs, 
groping in the dark, and with all sorts of dis- 
crepancies and disorders becoming cumulative. 
If it did not completely break down, it would 
be a retrogressive shrinkage in the volume and 
numbers of industries, leading back toward 
primitive standards. 

It is so easy to talk of nations at war becom- 
ing more socialistic; but what warring nation 
would dare to dispense with the use of a transfer- 
able money and of competition? What states- 
man w^ould dare to recommend such a course? 
We must remember that the colossal movements 
of war are reared on colossal debts which future 
generations have to sweat for. They are any- 
thing but normal movements; and they are, 
moreover, supported by the accompanying aid 



90 THE COMING GOLDEN AGE 

of value determinations effected through money 
and competition. 



OTHER SOCIAL SCHEMES 

The apostles of Free Trade proclaim a right 
to buy and to sell separately, without relation to 
each other. In effect, they plead for unre- 
ciprocal Monetarism and the non-collusive mon- 
opoly of Capitalism this gives rise to. 

When the doctrine was first utilized as a 
political shibboleth, its " freedom " was so allur- 
ing as to lead many persons to believe it would 
inaugurate the millennium. Its industrial indi- 
vidualism contrasted strangely with the indus- 
trial collectivism of the Socialist. Both were 
founded on vain assumptions. 

The doctrine does not presuppose the exist- 
ence of distinct national value standards — 
to counteract whose misguiding influence on 
the trade of nations, tariff taxes and other dis- 
criminating devices have often been resorted 
to; and for this reason its champions condemn 
all legislative interference between the trade 
of one nation and another. 
r Apart from their opposition to all forms of 
collusive and government-favored monopolies, 



SOCIALISM AND OTHER PROJECTS 91 

the advocates of the doctrine virtually plead 
for the unlimited extension of Capitalism. 

Another alluring scheme is what is known as 
the Single Tax, designed to convey to govern- 
ments all the revenue that the land owner is 
able to extort for the use of his lands. This 
is to be accomplished by concentrating all 
government taxes into a single one placed upon 
lands only, exclusive of the improvements on 
them. 

In effect, land monopoly is to be crushed by 
relieving both money and mercantile monopolies 
of all taxation, and thereby enabling these 
exempted forms of monopoly to be capitalized 
higher, for the larger net revenue this exemp- 
tion w^ould leave them. In short, stocks would 
be inflated and lands deflated. The scalp of 
the land monopolist is to be hung in the belt 
of the Wall Street shark; and the toiler is to 
benefit solely in being allowed to watch the 
game. 

Unaware of the part played by non-collusive 
monopoly, it was natural for the Single Taxer 
to assume that his blow at land monopoly 
would terminate all monopoly not yet reached 
by the law. He was also consistently an ad- 



92 THE COMING GOLDEN AGE 

vocate of Free Trade and a defender of Cap- 
italism. 

Still another fascinating proposal is that of 
profit sharing, which offers to allow toilers a 
share in the net earnings of a concern, in addi- 
tion to wages. 

The scheme is a laudable one, so far as indi- 
vidual enterprises are concerned. But if made 
universal and compulsory, for all enterprises, 
while Capitalism went on unrestrained, its 
result would simply be to take back from the 
toiler in larger commercial profit margins what 
is added to his wage. 

Our industrial system is already a vast 
profit sharing co-operation or union, in which 
the capitalist shares without the slightest justi- 
fication. To share equitably with capital were 
like sharing one's purse equitably with a high- 
way robber. 

Of economic movements in general, it may 
be said that, so far as they attempt to reduce 
the aggressions of capital in any single channel 
or sphere, leaving it otherwise undisturbed, 
their effect is bound to be abortive — merely 
diverting rather than diminishing the volume 



SOCIALISM AND OTHER PROJECTS 93 

of capitalistic aggression. The very fact that 
capital goes on compounding till its bulk peri- 
odically becomes such as to be insupportable 
and to precipitate industrial crises, from which 
there is no relief until a considerable liquidation 
has taken place, shows how feeble an impres- 
sion spasmodic and partial assaults upon Capi- 
talism make. 



PART TWO 



PROPRIETARISM 

OR 

MONETARISM MADE RECIPROCAL 

THE INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM OF THE FUTURE 



CHAPTER I 

Constructive Proprietarism 

Proprietarism is a state of industrial so- 
ciety in which each separate toiler is an un- 
encumbered proprietor, both of his home, with 
all its accessories and supplies, and of his 
equipment as an independent toiler. This ap- 
plies to all kinds of toil, whether manual or 
mental — to every form of service acceptable 
to his fellow toilers. 

In order to insure the permanence of this 
status, the system also enforces reciprocal 
buying, and acts as custodian of the funds to 
be set aside for acquiring and perpetuating the 
proprietary status, making it inalienable. 

As part of its enforcement of reciprocal buy- 
ing, all the delinquent buying represented by 
existing capital would, within a limited time, 
have to be reciprocated by consumption of the 
principal. 

In order to accomplish these ends, it will 
be necessary to enact and enforce a code of 

97 



98 THE COMING GOLDEN AGE 

special laws covering, among other matters, the 
two following provisions : 

1. The stringent debarment of further cap- 
italistic investments, coupled with the allow- 
ance of a fixed period, say of one decade, within 
which all existing capital is to be dissipated — 
either consumed or diverted into proprietary 
wealth. 

2. The introduction of sell money, previously 
alluded to, to supplement the circulation of 
money, in being given to the payer of money 
by its recipient. 

All properties would be regarded as capi- 
talistic that were held as a source of interest 
profits; also new loans and credits, while 
those outstanding would be allowed a reason- 
able period within which to be liquidated. 
Lands also would be regarded as capital if 
held for a rental or operated by hired help 
from whose labor interest profits were derived. 
Mercantile stocks, for reasons that will here- 
after appear, will automatically be so reduced 
in volume as to lose the power of capital. 

♦Proprietarism will merely limit the uses to 
which wealth may be put, not the quantity a 



CONSTRUCTIVE PROPRIETARISM 99 

man may possess. In its accompaniment of 
reciprocal buying, it would prevent men from 
accumulating to an extent, or in a manner, 
debarring others from acquiring and retaining 
their own properties. It would protect men 
in acquiring all the non-predatory property they 
could, by debarring the acquisition of predatory 
properties. 

Property in the new order would enjoy a 
superior degree of protection, shielded from 
the aggressions of unreciprocal trade and the 
devouring encroachments of predatory prop- 
erties. They would represent the fruit of nor- 
mal abstinence, rather than of the abnormal 
and excessive abstinence through which capital 
is acquired. 

If the advent of unreciprocal Monetarism was 
a revolution, in depriving the masses of their 
proprietary status, Proprietarism will be one 
restoring to them their lost heritage. 

With the capitalist compelled to begin con- 
suming, instead of constantly adding to his 
principal, the power of non-collusive monopoly, 
and the ability of capital to command interest 
profits, would be gone. 

Wages would at once respond by absorbing 
to themselves what had previously gone to 



100 THE COMING GOLDEN AGE 

interest profits. This would supply to the 
toiler the margin through which he would 
recover his proprietary status and be able per- 
manently to retain it. It would mark the begin- 
ning of the end of Capitalism. 



SELL 


ONE 
DOLLAR 


Receivable on payment of One Money Dollar. 
Payable on receipt of One Money Dollar. 



Sample Sell Dollar. 



We will assume sell money already to be in 
circulation, side by side with regular or buy 
money — the sell money being issued only in 
non-fractional denominations, and not being re- 
quired to be given in return for the fractional 
portion of a dollar in any money payment. 

Buying any article, the seller would now 
have to give me not only the article I had 
purchased, but along with it, one sell dollar for 
each money dollar I had paid him. 

Paying twenty dollars for a coat, I would 
be given in return both the coat and twenty 
sell dollars. 

When my pay envelope was handed to me, 



CONSTRUCTIVE PROPRIETARISM 101 

I would have to hand over one sell dollar for 
each money dollar it contained. 

So it would be, wherever I went. If I took 
in money, I w r ould have to give out sell money; 
and if I paid out any money, I would be given 
sell money. 

When I had little money left, I would have 
much sell money on hand; and if I acquired 
much money, I would have the less of sell 
money. As soon as I ran out of my sell money, 
I would be able to take in no more money. 
I wrould now have to begin over by renewing 
my sell money supply — by spending money — 
or else stop taking in any more money. I 
could never hereafter secure a loanable surplus 
of money. My stock of sell money would 
limit the amount of money I could at any 
time acquire. 

Everybody's position would be the same as 
mine. Nobody would be able to hoard money. 

The same would also be true of all business 
enterprises. They also would be circumscribed. 
They would all have to spend what they for- 
merly had put into capital. And they w r ould 
have to spend it as rapidly as they wished to 
take in money. 

The sell money would be as much in demand 



102 THE COMING GOLDEN AGE 

as the regular or buy money. It would be 
needed in order to keep on taking in money. 

People would thereafter be as anxious to buy 
as to sell, and there would be no more repressed 
energies and industrial crises to disturb and 
demoralize industry. 

There would now be both work and wages 
for all, such as would tempt the most chronic 
idler to cultivate the work habit. Nor would 
there longer be difficulty in getting work; for 
a large choice of jobs would always be avail- 
able to select from. The merchant would have 
orders for goods coming in faster than he could 
secure them; and the factory would be running 
on advance orders beyond its power to fill. 
Every additional man would mean so much 
additional business for the factory. 

The toiler would now rise out of the dust of 
his outcast status; and the submerged tenth, 
neck deep in the mires of demoralization and 
degeneracy, would begin to recover the paralyzed 
energies of muscle and of mind — the vagabond, 
the criminal, the debtor, the hireling and the 
tenant, all passing through a wonderful meta- 
morphosis, to emerge as unencumbered pro- 
prietors, non-tributary and free. 

The restrictions of Proprietarism would curb 



CONSTRUCTIVE PROPRIETARISM 103 

the madness of our wildcat Commercialism — 
its perpetual pinch of starvation mania; its 
horrid fits of industrial depression; its detestable 
trade hunger wars; and its thousand and one 
forms of veneered barbarism. 

All the previous glut of wares clogging the 
avenues of trade, and dallying there at a fright- 
ful cost to the famished consumer, would now 
appear in the overflowing abundance of joyous, 
cheerful homes — a tangible reminder of the tran- 
sition to Proprietarism, or reciprocal Monetarism. 

The fundamental integrity of Proprietarism, 
and its marvelous power, would now be voiced 
in every fiber and in every aspect of social 
life — upon all sides expelling the false, the 
pretentious, the distorted and the incongru- 
ous developments of unbridled Monetarism. It 
would carry into the home a new atmosphere 
— invigorating, uplifting, upbuilding — an atmos- 
phere opening the heart and broadening the 
mind of man. 

INTRODUCTION OF SELL MONEY 

Preliminary to the introduction of sell money, 
a special census would be taken, designed to 
provide the basis for a free issue of the initial 
or proprietary supply. 



lOi THE COMING GOLDEN AGE 

In this free distribution, a uniform quantity 
would be given to each adult, with a smaller 
quantity added for each minor in the family. 
A limited quantity, also, on an approved basis, 
would be issued to business concerns, including 
agricultural proprietors. None, however, would 
be issued on property or capital — the basis of 
the distribution being wholly personal and 
commercial. 

Persons desiring more sell money than al- 
lotted to them, would be enabled to secure 
more by purchase from the government at a 
price, we will say, of fifty cents in money for 
each sell dollar. A dated receipt accompany- 
ing each purchase would enable the purchaser 
to have them redeemed by the government at 
the same figure, less about one-half per cent 
per month for the time elapsed since their 
purchase. 

Since no fractional sell money would be 
used, and the payer of fractional money would 
receive none in return, his disadvantage would 
be offset by a reduction in the price of fractional 
money, which the government would sell at 
Three of the fractional for Two of the non- 
fractional dollars. The fractional money would 
be made legal tender only in fractional amounts, 



CONSTRUCTIVE PROPRIETARISM 105 

though receivable in any quantity by the gov- 
ernment at its fractional value. 

With these provisions, and such others as 
might at any time be found necessary or ad- 
visable, trade would be readily able to adapt 
itself to varying seasons and exigencies — the 
cost of sell money being made such as to debar 
its use for acquiring permanent money hoards. 



PROPERTY CONSERVATION 

As one of its provisions, the code of Pro- 
prietarism would call for the creation of a 
bureau to supervise the conservation of wealth 
and resources — one branch of which would deal 
with the acquisition and conservation of pro- 
prietary wealth, acting as custodian of the 
funds to be set aside from wages for this purpose. 

The bureau would assist in furthering the 
organization of co-operative associations and 
their acquisition of proprietary wealth, both 
home and industrial properties. It would do 
much in helping to secure the best plans for 
regulating different kinds of enterprises and dis- 
seminating all helpful information to persons 
contemplating such undertakings. 



106 THE COMING GOLDEN AGE 

Only actual operatives in either commercial 
or industrial enterprises, whether engaged in 
mental or manual labor, and only actual occu- 
pants of their properties, would be eligible to 
own stock in these proprietary associations; 
and that only in proportion to their part therein, 
unless the members of the association chose 
another basis. 

Original issues of stock would be valued by 
the cost of the investment; but the real value 
would depend upon the judgment displayed in 
making the investment, and on the ability with 
which its affairs were managed. The abler its 
managers, and the better the support given 
them by its operatives, the larger a proprietary 
wage will it be able to pay for work, as com- 
pared with other establishments of the same 
kind; or the better will be its service to home 
occupants, as the case might be. 

It should be borne in mind that every enter- 
prise is much like a great machine that can 
make a larger or a smaller output with the 
same labor, according the degree in which its 
parts are adapted to the work for which it is 
designed. 

The best managed concerns will therefore be 
besieged with demands for admission, and their 



CONSTRUCTIVE PROPRIETARISM 107 

stocks will rise above the par of its cost; while 
poorly managed concerns will repel member- 
ship, and their stock will fall below the par 
of its cost. 

While shares of stock would be debarred 
from speculative transfer, they would be trans- 
ferable to a successor — seller and buyer adjust- 
ing between themselves the price to be paid. 
The amount paid would only be transferred 
from the buyer's to the seller's proprietary 
reserve account. The account itself would be 
treated as an inalienable property — one to be 
handed down from generation to generation, 
to be at all times ready to be applied for the 
reconstruction of plants when needing it, and 
always having the form of part property, and 
part fund covering the value loss occasioned by 
wear. Only the excess, when stock was sold 
above par, would be turned over to the seller. 

Every establishment would thus be put on 
its merits, and every member of these asso- 
ciations would be interested in its success, with 
this advantage over any government-owned 
properties, or any owned by speculative stock- 
holders, that its regulation would be in the 
hands of those best informed regarding the 
nature and wants of the business and also in 



108 THE COMING GOLDEN AGE 

closest touch with its affairs. These men would 
be best qualified to choose managers and to 
co-operate with them. 

The code of Proprietarism would also pro- 
vide for a commercial bureau to supply such 
additional regulations as Proprietarism would 
need, much of which would be for services at 
present rendered by banks. The code would 
also define the limits permissible in the giving 
of credits, distinguishing between those con- 
flicting with the aims of Proprietarism and 
those that do not — such as the credits that 
might be given to purchasers of enterprises 
for use as proprietary properties, who would 
be allowed to make payments at regular inter- 
vals until the end of the decade allotted for the 
dissipation of capital. Among the permissible 
credits would also be such as were involved in 
the prepayment of goods, and such as might 
be needed to cover unforeseen emergencies. 

With these provisions for Proprietarism duly 
inaugurated, the further development of the 
system could well be left to the work of ordi- 
nary evolution. It would never stop growing 
and would never reach what might be called 



CONSTRUCTIVE PROPRIETARISM 109 

a final stage. Monetarism is an organic sys- 
tem; and Proprietarism is only Monetarism 
made reciprocal. 

While Proprietarism is capable of extension 
to world-wide dimensions, it is also capable of 
trial on national and even smaller propor- 
tions, trading with the world at large through 
gold and retaining for its domestic circulation 
a paper money supplemented with sell money. 
With its properties made inalienable, its value 
standards would not be imposed on, whether 
they rose above or fell below those prevailing 
abroad. 



CHAPTER II 

Transitional Proprietarism 

There would be no scantily equipped and no 
needlessly duplicated establishments under the 
New Order, such as characterize our topsy turvy 
Commercialism. Its dispositions would all tend 
to harmony as well as to justice and efficiency. 

In diverting capital to proprietary wealth; 
and in diverting what had gone into interest 
profits to the toiler's wage, a handsome margin 
would be left to enable the toiler to enjoy a 
better living and to have more liberal hours for 
leisure; while acquiring the proprietary status 
by which, within the decade of transition, to 
supplant the capitalist. 

A vast ocean of human energies formerly re- 
pressed and applied in non-productive and de- 
structive pursuits, would also now be liberated 
and diverted into channels of usefulness. 

So attractive would office, shop and factory 
now become, so liberal their conditions, and 
so large their wage, as to draw into them all 
the great surplusage of help wearing itself out 

no 



TRANSITIONAL PROPRIETARISM 111 

in the useless superfluity of commercial estab- 
lishments. Economic law would forbid this 
wastage of human effort. 

Woman also would now be in greater demand 
in the better provided homes of Proprietarism 
— not as servants of the rich, but as members 
of flourishing households and as wives and 
mothers. The prosperous offices, stores and 
shops, as well as factories, would all be con- 
stantly hungering for help, and serving as her 
refuge in the last extreme — going far toward 
elevating her status as an independent person. 
It would give to her a greater influence upon 
man, making for the elevation of both sexes. 



THE PROPRIETARY HOME 

The proprietary home would usually be one 
of a large number, jointly owned and occupied 
by the members of a home-owning association, 
and managed by officers chosen by its members. 
A monthly wear tax would be drawn from 
each member's wage in place of rent — a much 
smaller sum than present rents. This would be 
placed in a building reserve fund, to enable 
ultimate reconstruction when needed. If the 
home had not yet been fully paid for, an ac- 



112 THE COMING GOLDEN AGE 

quisition tax would also be levied, until all 
delinquencies had been met. 

Each member of these associations would be 
a stockholder, and the stock would represent 
the buildings together with the reserve fund 
covering the loss of value incurred by the 
wear of the buildings. An agent chosen by 
the members would supervise the buildings, 
dealing with members individually in the allot- 
ment of quarters and fixing of rates. It would 
always take two to make a bargain. Members 
removing or withdrawing from the association 
would always be able to have the money in their 
reserve account transferred to that of the asso- 
ciation they afterwards joined, while the bal- 
ance of their equity in stock would be sub- 
ject to sale to a successor. As the stock bore 
no relation to any particular quarters, it would 
be far more readily salable than a detached 
home under present conditions; and removals 
would involve little risk of loss. 

With an overwhelming demand for labor con- 
stantly in force at full-value wages; with the 
household amply equipped and liberally fur- 
nished throughout, and stored with a super- 
abundance of supplies for table and wardrobe — 
all that had previously glutted warehouses and 



TRANSITIONAL PROPRIETARISM 113 

storeshelves — and with every form of disability 
guarded against through government insurance 
compulsorily administered; the new hearth 
would resound with a mirth and cheer like 
that of carefree childhood. It would be a new 
life — the golden age restored, but on a far 
higher plane. 

NEW ORDER CRITERIONS 

As one of the first results of the overwhelming 
demand in force under Proprietarism, the former 
overstock of wares in the warehouses and on 
the storeshelves of the merchant would begin 
rapidly to dwindle, absorbed into the house- 
holds of the people; and this decline would go 
on until more and more sales would have to 
be made from samples and catalogues, in the 
form of advance orders, largely prepaid for the 
sake of the sell money that prepayments would 
command and also for precedence in having 
orders attended to. 

The previous order in mercantile affairs would 
now be reversed. What had formerly been the 
surplus stock of the merchant would now be 
reduced to a famine stock, while the former 
famine in the household would be replaced 



114 THE COMING GOLDEN AGE 

with a great superabundance. On the one 
side the merchant would face a famine stock of 
wares, and on the other a glut of advance 
orders. With his famine stock, he could no 
longer lord it over the producer; nor with the 
superabundance in the households, could he 
dictate the prices buyers were to pay. The 
cost of middleman extravagance could no longer 
be imposed on others. 

Not the quantity of orders he had, but the 
quantity of goods he could obtain, would now 
gauge the amount of business he could do; 
and this quantity would depend entirely on 
putting every spare dollar into the prices he 
offered for the goods. Every dollar diverted 
into means for attracting trade would leave 
so much less to offer for goods and would 
impair his ability to secure them. 

Nor would the merchant ever again amass an 
overstock of wares. He would not wish to 
suffer the loss from the steady decline in their 
value that material progress would constantly 
produce — a decline no longer to be counter- 
acted by the rise caused as the result of in- 
creasing interest profits. All material pro- 
ductions would be similarly affected, making 
speculation in them a certain loss. 



TRANSITIONAL PROPRIETARISM 115 

The manufacturer would also now have to 
put every spare dollar into the wages he offered 
for work; for every man he failed to secure 
or hold would mean so much less business. 
With advance orders already a glut, what sense 
were there in making further expenditures to 
secure more of them? 

So long as consumers, as a class, were forced 
to live from hand to mouth, and to largely de- 
pend upon credit; and so long as chronic 
trade congestion kept a large supply of produc- 
tions at the disposal of every intervening 
huckster, peddler or petty merchant; and so 
long as the greater merchants exacted enormous 
profit margins, the field between producer and 
consumer was naturally filled with a great 
superfluity of middlemen, making the cost of 
transferring wares from producer to consumer 
inordinately high. 

With consumers, however, under Proprie- 
tarism, able to buy in liberal quantities, and to 
pay cash or prepay; and with the monopoly 
power of the larger merchants eradicated, while 
the smaller ones were unable to pay the prices 
necessary to secure wares, trade between both 
farm and factory and the fireside would be 



116 THE COMING GOLDEN AGE 

more direct and served at a trifling cost, to 
the mutual benefit of both producer and con- 
sumer. 

The producer in all lines and branches of 
effort would now net far larger returns than 
ever before, while able, as consumer, to obtain 
for his money far more than ever. Each indi- 
vidual would profit both as producer and as 
consumer. 

On the farm or at the forge; in every vo- 
cation, whether in a profession, at a trade, or 
in common labor; whether delving in the bowels 
of the earth; whether plying vessels over the 
deep, or speeding traffic over the iron rails, 
the magic of Proprietarism would touch all 
industries and all toilers with its prosperity. 



CO-OPERATIVE ENTERPRISES 

Co-operative undertakings will, under the new 
conditions, be far less hazardous and much more 
successful than such are at the present time. 

Every step will be on a superior footing, from 
obtaining the necessary funds to their per- 
manent operation. 

In ordinary mercantile concerns, the quantity 
of stock to be carried will be trivial, requiring 



TRANSITIONAL PROPRIETARISM 117 

fewer equipments and occupying much less floor 
space; and the cost of handling, shelf wear and 
insurance will also be insignificant. Store rents 
also, owing to the reduced number of stores, 
would drop to very low rates; while outlays for 
attracting trade would now be unnecessary. 
There would be no risks to assume by giving 
credits or costs incurred for collections, since 
all trade would now be for cash or by prepay- 
ments. Average sales would also be larger, 
and a large trade be done through advance 
orders. Few obstacles will there consequently 
be to the successful operation of co-operative 
mercantile establishments. 

Similar advantages wx>uld also largely attend 
the undertaking of manufacturing enterprises. 
In these also, cash payments, prepaid advance 
orders, and the rapid movement of productions 
from source to destination would combine to 
reduce the quantity of operative wealth needed 
in any undertaking. Nor, with the large margin 
of acquisition incorporated in the new wage, 
would toilers encounter any difficulty in launch- 
ing or acquiring enterprises of the largest mag- 
nitude. Immune from the WTecking influences 
of recurrent industrial crises; and favored with 
an overwhelming, continuous and reliable de- 



118 THE COMING GOLDEN AGE 

mand for productions, in place of the former 
congestion; there would be no necessity to 
plunge into wild and hazardous adventures. 
Nor would they be harassed with the former 
difficulties of getting trade — one of the hardest 
nuts the business man had to crack. Where 
progress demanded the assumption of hazards, 
governments would co-operate. 

Enterprises of every description would now 
be in the market, to be acquired at the buyer's 
own figures and on his own terms — the owners 
glad to accept pay in monthly installments until 
the close of the transition decade. They will 
be dependent on these monthly payments to 
live on, since no longer able to command the 
former interest profits. 

The larger the enterprise, the greater will 
be the volume of its former interest profits, 
now to pass into wages and become available 
for acquiring proprietorship. 

All the manifold trickeries of trade, which 
had attained their worst and foulest form in 
politics and diplomacy, would now be supplanted 
by open candor and truthfulness. A superior 
class of men would enter these fields, whose 
standard would become one of rectitude rather 
than deceit and self-seeking. The enormous 



TRANSITIONAL PROPRIETARISM 119 

profit margins that had been the feeding trough 
of the swine of political and commercial graft, 
would be a thing of the past. 

A GENERAL RE-ALIGNMENT 

Deprived of his former excessive profit mar- 
gins, the manufacturer would no longer scour 
the world with his troops of costly salesmen. 
He would confine his efforts to the trade of 
his immediate vicinity; and the fact that his 
distant rivals were compelled to do the same, 
keeping out of his territory, would result in 
giving him a more solid trade at his door, of 
less cost to serve and retain. 

With further land speculation also debarred 
by the previously mentioned restrictions of 
Proprietarism, the holder of surplus lands would 
at once begin to dispose of them in small 
tracts and at a low figure, so as to realize on 
them before the end of the transition decade 
made this impossible. Land values would there- 
fore begin a gradual decline, the effect of which 
would be to develop a closer contiguity of settle- 
ment in all localities of good soil and proximity 
to markets; and special legislation could still 
further perfect the most wholesome contiguity 
of settlement. 



120 THE COMING GOLDEN AGE 

The present maldistribution of population 
would be gradually remedied by diversion of 
people from both isolated and congested sec- 
tions, and by the development of many dis- 
tricts through the location of manufacturing 
plants at points more contiguous to the ter- 
ritory they are to serve. This transmigration 
would continue until the urban geography of 
the earth was rewritten, making marvelous 
transformations. The deflation of land values 
would restore a normal distribution of popu- 
lation. 

The decline in value of both residence and 
business lots in the cities would also remove a 
mighty obstacle to the readaptation of cities 
to modern requirements — a crying need of the 
times. The coming city will have to be one 
in which the pedestrian will not have to place 
his life in jeopardy every time he steps out 
of doors. It will have to be intersected with 
wide, parked streets to serve as fire breaks as 
well as safe play grounds and shady harbors of 
rest. Its public buildings and places of assem- 
blage will have to be detached on all sides, 
admitting of light, and ventilation, as well as 
of safe exit. Its buildings should, moroever, 
be so aligned as to be readily accessible to car 



TRANSITIONAL PROPRIETARISM 121 

lines serving as carriers of all freights and par- 
cels; as well as of passengers. 

The power of wealth would no longer deter- 
mine vocations; and all positions, from the 
lowest to the highest, would become the prizes 
of merit. Neither the rich and their kin, nor 
those w r ho are subservient to them, would be 
able to secure the pick of positions and vo- 
cations, leaving the many to grub among the 
leavings. A higher standard of efficiency would 
inevitably result, and a superior manhood and 
womanhood. 

With press and pulpit no longer dependent 
on the patronage of the wealthy and of capi- 
talistic commercial enterprises, and hacked by 
the support of a prosperous laity, these insti- 
tutions would be emancipated from an influence 
of doubtful good. The autocracy of wealth 
would cease to usurp the voice and the powers 
of the people. 

GOVERNMENT UNDER PROPRIETARISM 

It is quite obvious that the wholesome dif- 
fusion of wealth under Proprietarism will evolve 
a superior representation of the people in the 
bodies chosen for this purpose. 



122 THE COMING GOLDEN AGE 

Its candidates for office will not have to be 
backed with plutocratic funds, nor have such 
funds to contend against. Nor would they have 
to compete against men whose expected grafts 
enabled them to outbid honest candidates. The 
passing of large gross profit margins would also 
carry with it the passing of the political grafter. 
Plutocracy itself will be passing, and the last 
vestige of Capitalism will rapidly fade into a 
reminiscence. 

With the fat dried out of government patron- 
age, officials will be able to give their undivided 
attention to their duties, no longer hampered 
by the usurping will of the men behind the 
throne. A better and an abler class of men will 
find their way into office, and better work will 
be accomplished. 

Poverty would no longer close the eyes or 
bind the hand of the new government. It 
would take under its sheltering wing all persons 
suffering from disabilities, and see that all de- 
pendent persons were duly cared for. Even the 
indigent and the chronic evil doers would be 
placed under its wardship as a class for whose 
deplorable condition society is not wholly irre- 
sponsible. It would as far as possible endeavor to 
raise their standard of manhood and womanhood. 



TRANSITIONAL PROPRIETARISM 123 

The new government would burden itself with 
no tasks that could reasonably be expected to 
be performed as well or better through private 
enterprise, reserving its powers for those tasks 
that could only be efficiently performed by the 
government. 

The political government would supplement 
the play of economic forces, holding them in 
proper check, so as to maintain both an unim- 
paired reciprocalism and an irreproachable pro- 
prietary status; and also providing for all those 
works necessary to enlightenment and progress 
which the ordinary play of supply and demand, 
even under Proprietarism, might leave neglected. 

The transition decade over, provision would 
be made to supply each member of the rising 
generation with an outfit of proprietary wealth— 
the proprietary status — as his due inheritance, 
making this wealth inalienable — a heritage to 
be handed down from generation to genera- 
tion, and reverting to the state after the indi- 
vidual ceases to have need of it. 

In its attitude to other nations, the proprie- 
tary government would not tolerate its own 
people to acquire or owtl any property abroad, 
nor allow people of other lands to own or acquire 
any of its properties. A strict industrial auton- 



124 THE COMING GOLDEN AGE 

omy would be enforced, and its influence in all 
international movements would be bent toward 
maintaining such autonomy in all countries. 
It would do all in its power to help in lifting 
the world out of the industrial feudalism in 
which it is still engulfed. 

CONCLUSION 

In Capitalism, once unmasked, we see only 
a licensed diversion of money from its normal 
channels of circulation, and of wealth from 
its normal uses, so as to halt industry for "its 
money or its life." 

When the truth is told, Capitalism is nothing 
less than a legalized form of robbery. 

Will society continue to shield this outrage? 

Can it afford to tolerate this pernicious viola- 
tion of fundamental law? 

Can it allow Monetarism to remain unre- 
ciprocal? 

In Monetarism we have the permanent part 
of our industrial system. Society is asked to 
perfect, not to discard it. Its defects are too 
glaring and too frightful to be longer over- 
looked, now that their remedy is in reach. 
Their remedy is, in fact, far less hazardous than 



TRANSITIONAL PROPRIETARISM 125 

further tolerance of unbridled Monetarism. Con- 
servatism itself must cry for the needed change. 
A return to either Barterism, or to any form 
of Collectivism, even though it evaded Capital- 
ism, is unthinkable. The way out of the mire 
must not lead deeper into it. No retrogressive 
step should be taken, nor blind experiment made. 
Forward, not backward, must be the march of 
industrial empire. 

Proprietarism is the logical goal of industrial 
evolution. It is a step forward from crude, 
unbridled Monetarism, to its perfected form, 
in which reciprocal buying is to be enforced 
and a proprietary status maintained, protecting 
property not only against physical, but also 
against economic violence. Until planted upon 
this foundation, political democracy will remain 
an empty delusion, and peace on earth a hope- 
less dream. Along the road to Proprietarism 
lies the pathway of man's industrial destiny. 
******* 

For more than forty centuries has the Nero 
of Capitalism held the world in awe; for more 
than forty centuries has this gilded monster 
alternately primped and gorged, in the delirium 
of a madman's dream; for more than forty 



126 THE COMING GOLDEN AGE 

centuries has he kept the toilers of this earth 
wandering amid the horrors of the desert of 
want, suffering the agonies of a living death. 

We can now see the silver line that marks 
the desert's edge. Beyond shines the land of 
promise: the golden age, in which no man's 
birthright will be alienated, and none suffered 
to lose his place in the workshop of the world; 
in which none will sweat under the yoke of a 
tributary bondage, or eat the bitter bread of 
soul-destroying charity. 

Are you prepared, comrades in toil, to cross 
this line? Or shall you go on licking the hand 
that flays us? 

How long shall our frail bodies be made the 
sport of war, to feed the lust of the capitalistic 
Moloch? How long are we to have our wives 
widowed and our children orphaned, to gratify 
the insatiable wealth hunger of this beast? 

And you that are capitalists, now that you 
can no longer plead ignorance, have you sunk 
so low as still to demand the retention of this 
privileged robbery? Can you deny the justice 
or the practicability of Proprietarism, and the 
liberality of the terms it offers you? 



TRANSITIONAL PROPRIETARISM 127 

Few of you, indeed, will have the effrontery 
to oppose so necessary a movement or to resist 
so just a claim for restitution. You cannot 
refuse to pay the debt of repudiated buying your 
capital represents. Your own wisdom, if not 
your conscience, must teach you which course 
to pursue. There is but one way that is right, 
and that you must choose. You must fall in 
line, helping to make the adoption and inaugu- 
ration of Proprietarism an orderly and har- 
monious movement. You owe this to your 
fellow men. You owe it to yourselves. 



The End 



